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DAYS IN ATTICA 



BY 



MRS. R. C. BOSANQUET 



WITH 17 ILLUSTRATIONS AND 3 PLANS 



NEW YORK 
THE MAGMILLAN COMPANY 

1914 



H^^ 






'(2 



TO 

T. H. 



PREFACE 

SINCE these chapters were written the Greek 
nation has entered upon a new phase. The 
Balkan War is over, and it is still too soon to 
estimate all the results ; but even the extension of the 
kingdom is of secondary importance when compared 
with the new provinces which recent years have added 
to the national character — reserve, forethought, self- 
denial. These qualities are not the results of the war. 
The successes of the Greek nation, when suddenly 
called upon to take up arms, were the fruit of a pre- 
liminary period of self-discipline. It was the new 
Greek who heralded the new Greece. 

Since Mr. Venizelos came into power such important 
changes have come about that the nation seems trans- 
formed. The Constitution has been revised, criminal 
law amended, the army and navy remodelled, and the 
police service reformed. Above all, the civil service has 
been made permanent and independent of party — a 
change which involved sacrifices on the part of men 
of all classes. In a country notorious for its frequent 
changes of ministry Venizelos' Government, after four 
years of office, is stronger than ever ; in fact, the old 
party divisions have been broken down by a new 
national consciousness. 



viii DAYS IN ATTICA 

Thus before his reign of fifty years was so tragically 
ended King George had seen some of the reforms of 
which he had dreamed, and which under former con- 
ditions had seemed to be outside the sphere of practical 
politics, realized without a struggle by the volition of the 
whole people. Some of the new measures meant personal 
loss to those who gladly supported them ; and this 
spirit of abnegation has shone out again and again 
during the recent campaign. 

If I have made little mention of these things and of 
the vistas now opening before Greater Greece, it is not 
because the miracle of national regeneration has been 
overlooked, but because they were outside the scope of 
this volume, which is a record of Athenian yesterdays. 
Athens herself is changing and growing. She will never 
lose her charm, but that which is drawn here as the 
modern city may soon seem as picturesque and as 
remote as the Athens of King Otho. 

Many books have been written about the Athens of 
classical days, but there are other aspects of her history 
and associations to which less justice has been done. 
Full of romance in themselves, they are essential links in 
the process by which Ancient Greece has grown into the 
Greek Kingdom of to-day. These sketches may serve to 
persuade the leisured traveller that he has not exhausted 
Athens and Attica when he has seen the Acropolis and the 
museums. For such a traveller, not for the professed 
scholar, I have added a list of books, most of them easily 
accessible. The larger, illustrated works may be found 
in the library of the Hellenic Society in London, or in 
those of the British and American Schools at Athens. I 
have not assumed a knowledge of Greek in my readers. 



PREFACE ix 

For those who have it, there are important books and 
papers by native historians, such as Sathas and Spyridon 
Lambros ; and Kambouroglu's two books on Turkish 
Athens are full of entertaining matter. 

I wish to thank Sir Arthur Evans for kindly per- 
mitting me to reproduce the painting of a Bull and 
Acrobats, found at Knossos ; Dr. Karo, Secretary of the 
German Archaeological Institute at Athens, for similar 
permission in regard to the Tiryns Boar-hunt; and the 
Committee of the British School at Athens for the use 
of two plans of churches taken from Mr. Schultz and 
Mr. Barnsley's Monastery of Saint Luke of Stiris. For 
other help I am especially indebted to Mrs. Steele, 
L. V. Hodgkin, R. H. Hodgkin, Mr. William Miller, 
Mr. John Penoyre, and Mr. W. E. Craigie. The foun- 
tain-head of my information throughout seems too 
obvious to mention since the title-page bears his name. 

E. S. B. 



CONTENTS 



PAGE 

INTRODUCTORY : TRAVEL IN GREECE . . . .1 

CHAPTER 

I. CRETE . . . . . . .13 

II. THE THIRSTY ARGIVE PLAIN • . . .50 

III. LEGENDS OF THE ACROPOLIS .... 66 

IV. PROMISE . . . . . . .86 

V. FULFILMENT . . . . . . I20 

VI. ON THE SOUTH SIDE OF THE HILL . . . 150 

VII. THE AFTERGLOW ..... 167 

VIII. THE BYZANTINE CHURCHES OF ATTICA . . . 192 

IX. THE AGE OF CHIVALRY . . . . 214 

X. THE DARK AGES ...... 234 

XI. MODERN ATHENS . . . . .255 

XII. HOME LIFE IN ATTICA ..... 274 

XIII. THE ATTIC COUNTRY-SIDE .... 297 

BIBLIOGRAPHY . . . . . .341 

INDEX ....... 345 



LIST OF PLATES 



THE PROPYLiEA FROM WITHIN .... Frontispiece ^ 

Froin a water-colour drawing by Miss Hodgkin 

TO FACE PAGE 

1. FIGURE OF SNAKE-CHARMER FOUND AT KNOSSOS . 22 » 

From the reprodtidion in the British Museum 

2. WALL-PAINTING FROM KNOSSOS : BULL AND ACROBATS . 28 ^ 

From a water-colour by Gillieron in the Liverpool Museum 

3. WALL-PAINTING FROM TIRYNS : BOAR-HUNT . . 54 \^" 

From Rodenwaldt's " Tiryns *' 

4. HEAD OF THE LEMNIAN ATHENA BY PHEIDIAS . .76 

From a photograph by Alinari 

5. ARCHAIC SCULPTURE ..... I02v'' 

From photographs by Alinari 

6. orator's PLATFORM ON THE PNYX . . . .112 

7. NORTH-EAST ANGLE OF THE PARTHENON . . I32 v' 

From a photograph by Alinari 

8. TWO VIEWS OF HADRIAN'S LIBRARY . . . . 178 '- 

a. From, an engraving 

b. From a photograph by Alinari 

9. BRONZE STATUE FROM ANTICYTHERA . . . 1 88 

From a photograph by Alinari 

10. MARBLE STATUE FROM ANTICYTHERA . . . I90 ^ 

From a photograph by Alinari 

11. TWO BYZANTINE CHURCHES .... I92 ' 

From photographs by Alinari 

xiii 



xiv DAYS IN ATTICA 

TO FACE PAGE 

12. COLOSSAL LION FROM PIR^US . . . .212 

From a photograph by Alinari 

13. ACROPOLIS FROM THE PNYX, SHOWING FRANKISH TOWER 222 

From Diifris " Voyage a Athenes et a Constantinople " 

14. THE BAZAAR OF TURKISH ATHENS .... 244 

From DodwelVs "Views in Greece" 



15. WOMAN OF ELEUSIS 
A VILLAGE HOST 

From photographs by W. A. Mansell & Co. 



282 



16. LOADS OF FUEL ...... 308 

From a pliotograph by W. A. Mansell & Co. 



SKETCH-MAP OF ATTICA AND ARGOLIS . . . 68 '^ 

PLAN OF THE ACROPOLIS . . . . . .122 

PLANS OF TWO BYZANTINE CHURCHES . . . 200 



DAYS IN ATTICA 



DAYS IN ATTICA 

INTRODUCTORY 
TRAVEL IN GREECE 

A CENTURY ago the tide of travel left Greece 
high and dry. Athens possessed but one 
tavern, and the few adventurers who came 
usually stayed with their consul or lodged with the 
French Capuchins in the monastery that then enclosed 
the Monument of Lysicrates. Now there are half a 
dozen first-class hotels, many smaller ones, and a few 
modest pensions. French fashions, English medicines, 
and German hardware are all seen in the main streets of 
the town. 

Yet Greece is still a remote land. Tourists do not 
come here as readily as to Italy or Egypt ; the Greek 
himself speaks of " going to Europe " and distinguishes 
between ^' European " and " native " goods. The 
Balkan highlands detach Greece from the rest of the 
continent, and to all intents and purposes she is an 
island. It is hoped that in a few years' time the railway 
which is already completed as far as Larisa will be con- 
tinued to Salonika, where it will join the European 
system. For the present the three main routes to 
Athens are by Brindisi, by Marseilles, and by Constanti- 
nople. The most direct line with the shortest sea voyage 

B 1 



2 DAYS IN ATTICA 

is via Brindisi. By this route the mails from London 
to Athens take something under five days. From Brin- 
disi to Patras is a two days' voyage ; from Marseilles to 
the Piraeus five days. The journey by Constantinople 
is the most costly, but it is comfortable and speedy. 
There is a good service of steamers between Constanti- 
nople and Athens, the fastest taking about two days. 

Climate. — In spite of its nearness to the sea, the 
climate of Athens is continental rather than marine in its 
extremes of temperature. In the three hottest months 
of summer the thermometer stands at about 95° in the 
shade, though this heat is made bearable by a cool 
breeze from the sea at evening. For the other nine 
months of the year the wind usually blows from the land, 
that is from the cold Balkan mountains. The plain of 
Athens is sheltered to some extent by its circle of hills ; 
it is only when these are themselves snow-covered that 
the cold is intense. It is strange that the average 
Athenian house is built without heating apparatus. Not 
till Parnes shows a snowy cap does the householder 
bestir himself to buy a stove. The ideal time for visiting 
Greece is April or May ; but the other months may well 
be enjoyed by one prepared for varieties of temperature. 
The variability of the Athenian climate will prevent the 
town from becoming a winter health resort, although the 
weather does not change from day to day as in England. 
For better or worse the sunshine or the rain persists for 
at least ten days at a time. Yet from season to season it 
is impossible to prophesy what will be in store. I have 
known a winter made up of a succession of balmy days ; 
another with black frost lasting for weeks, and a third 
with months of steady rain. In April especially a sample 
of all kinds of weather may be expected. The traveller 
must be content to take a supply of both winter and 
summer clothing. 

Hotel Life. — The cost of living in Athens is relatively 



TRAVEL IN GREECE 3 

high, and the terms quoted by the large hotel-keepers 
seem exorbitant until we remember that for the moment 
Athens has outgrown its sources of supply. Vegetables, 
fowls, game, and other things that used to be plentiful 
are now rather scarce. In all probability this condition 
of things will not last long, since capital readily finds its 
way into these safe enterprises that cater for the needs of 
a growing town. 

There is increasing competition among hotel-keepers. 
Within recent years a number of large new hotels have 
been opened, which give a varied choice of quarters. 
The " European " hotels in the neighbourhood of 
Constitution Square are just such as may be found in 
any other capital. On the other hand a traveller who 
wishes to see something more typically Athenian will 
find many possible hotels in the lower end of the 
town around Concord Square. Here he may obtain a 
clean bedroom and choose a restaurant suited to his 
purse. It is not usual for Greek families to take boarders. 
This, which often proves a pleasant plan in other 
countries, is here difficult to arrange and not always 
successful. 

Travel with a dragoman is in Greece much the same as 
in any other land. For a fixed sum (usually 40 francs a 
day per person) the dragoman takes you w^herever you 
wish to go, finds the mules or carriages, takes beds and 
a cook (or cooks himself), and arranges a comfortable 
lodging at the end of each day's journey. 

People who cannot stand irregular hours and uncer- 
tain diet will find this the right w^ay to travel. With a 
dragoman they can enjoy, not only the more obvious 
train and steamer routes, but also the beautiful moun- 
tain passes of the interior. Yet some of the true delights 
of travel must be sacrificed. Those who journey carry- 
ing with them the resources of civilization can never 
know ihe elemental joys that Hnk us to a vanished age : 



4 DAYS IN ATTICA 

the combat with hunger and weariness, the pleasurable 
dependence on the will of an unknown folk, the exhilara- 
tion of uncertainty in approaching the outskirts of that 
little town which for a whole hot afternoon has shone 
before us on the hills like a far white star ; the excitement 
of weighing the chances of our night's lodging as we sit 
at dusk in the village square sipping black coffee and 
wondering when the friendly crowd will finish its 
questions and bestir itself to find the man whose house 
shall receive us. " These people wash themselves every 
day. They have lead on their boots. The little one has 
gold in his mouth." Such are the awestruck whispers 
that reach our ears. 

You who travel *' personally conducted" cannot come 
into real contact with the country people. The most 
honest dragoman inevitably slides into the role of 
assuming that he is your protector and that all the 
country people are rogues. Your intercourse with them 
must be through him. The more he can exalt your 
position, the more he shines in reflected glory. Finally, 
you find yourself posing in lonely isolation as the 
English lordos. The children are rebuked for shyly 
touching your hands, and you miss many naive 
inquiries as to your wardrobe, your status, and your 
family. To lose any opportunity for getting on friendly 
terms with the Greek peasant is a real loss, for no man 
is more simple and courteous than he is in his own 
home. 

Travel without a dragoman is yearly becoming easier. 
There is now no part of Greece where a foreigner with 
a few words of modern Greek may not go. A few routes 
are suggested in Baedeker, but every man will be 
wise to make his own itinerary and take with him just 
enough of the necessities of life to enable him to face 
the luck of the road. As he goes along he will devise 
his own resources for comfort and despise those of 



TRAVEL IN GREECE 5 

others. The suggestions offered here are intended only 
for those who have as yet done no travelUng in Greece. 

Whether you walk or ride, you will need an animal 
to carry your pack. Mules or small ponies may be 
found at almost every village. You take a fresh animal 
at each stage, and the muleteer who goes with you acts 
as your guide for the day. His fee is included in the 
sum arranged for the use of the mule, but it does no 
harm to let him know that if he gives satisfaction there 
will be an additional tip at the end of the journey. On 
the disposition of this agoyatis depends much of your 
day's happiness. Usually he is a pleasant person, cheery 
and resourceful. Occasionally you will come across one 
who shows his resource by charging for unexpected 
extras, as in the story told by the scholiast on Demo- 
sthenes, where the agoyatis makes one charge for the 
mule and another for the mule's shadow in which the 
traveller had made his noonday halt. 

Three great annual fasts are observed by the Greek 
Church, forty days before Christmas, forty days before 
Easter, and forty days before the Feast of the Assump- 
tion in August. When planning a journey which will 
coincide with one of these (it must be remembered 
that a Greek calendar is necessary), you should carry 
your own supplies, to vary the otherwise monotonous 
repetition of fowl, eggs, and cheese. 

In the Peloponnese it is well to be provided with a 
private store of food at all times of the year. As butter 
is almost unknown, a jar of marmalade is worth carry- 
ing. Except for those who delight in the hardships of 
travel, a portable bed is almost a necessity. The bed in 
the village inn is often nothing but a quilt spread on the 
floor, and the quilt will seldom bear inspection. In all 
cases a light rug and a pillow are essential for use by 
day and night. The pillow should have a removable 
outer cover of American leather or dark washing material. 



6 DAYS IN ATTICA 

With the rug it forms a pad for the hard wooden 
saddle of the mule, and at night the clean pillow is 
slipped out of its case. A small set of washing apparatus 
must be taken also. In an otherwise comfortable lodg- 
ing there is often no arrangement for washing. 

Where possible put up at the house of the best man 
in the village rather than at the village inn ; in small 
places the khan is the dirtiest house in the town. You 
need have no scruple in asking for a lodging in the best 
house you see. The Greek peasant is at heart truly 
hospitable, and if you do not impress him as an exacting 
guest he will do his utmost to make you comfortable. 
He will open his best wine, send his wife into the loft to 
fetch the last fresh walnuts, and will load your plate with 
mizetkra (fresh cheese) and honey. In moderately well- 
to-do villages you will often be given meat for the even- 
ing meal. In the middle of the day the peasant does not 
himself eat meat, and does not expect his visitor to want 
it. It is safe to ask for macaroni, and a vice pilaf; these 
are favourite dishes and are well prepared. Giaoiirtiy a 
Turkish dish of curds, is refreshing in the middle of the 
day. The coarse country bread is delicious ; in some 
parts of Greece there is nothing but barley-bread, which 
may be some weeks old and must be soaked in water 
before it can be eaten. Oranges are abundant from 
Christmas to Easter ; eggs are always available, and there 
is often a variety of fresh vegetables. The resinous 
flavour of the country wine is detestable to most of 
us ; the country water is purer than that found in 
Athens. When in doubt, order black coffee. This and 
loukoumi (Turkish delight) are to be had at wayside 
khans where there may be nothing else ; the sticky sweet 
is sustaining and not unwholesome. A solid breakfast 
is, of course, unknown. Eggs and hot milk should be 
ordered overnight ; otherwise you will find a Greek 
breakfast of black coffee and rusks. Cows' milk is rarely 



TRAVEL IN GREECE 7 

found ; sheep's milk is sweet and creamy, goats' milk 
better than its reputation. 

The resources of the country are simple, but they are 
readily set at your disposal. Foreigners are still popular 
and are pre-eminently well treated. At places quite on 
the beaten track you may be troubled by beggars, but 
compared with other countries in Southern Europe 
Greece is free from this plague. If it is now on the 
increase travellers have only themselves to blame. A 
supply of cigarettes and small gifts come in useful as 
recompenses for the services offered freely in friendship. 
Unless thoroughly acquainted with the national idiom 
it is safer not to compromise your dignity by gratuitous 
condescension. Familiarity from a stranger is neither 
appreciated nor understood. In the country the manner 
of the well-bred is a combination of gravity and 
courtesy. Jocularity should follow only at a later stage 
of acquaintance. 

Unfortunately there are now scattered through Greece 
— especially Laconia — a class of people of whom these 
remarks do not hold good. These are the Greeks who 
have returned from America. They have finished their 
business cares as fruit-sellers or ice-cream men, and have 
returned home either wealthy or penniless to finish their 
days in fame and idleness at their native cafe. There is 
no road so lonely that we may not suddenly be greeted 
by a jaunty billycock and a cheeky grin : " Say, 
are you fellahs fr'm Chicago ? " or, " Good-day, boss ! 
Gimme a smoke." These encounters grate on the nerves, 
but are often kindly meant, and at the worst show only 
a vain officiousness. The Americanized Greek is a great 
person in his own town, and he welcomes this oppor- 
tunity of spreading his plumes before his fellow-towns- 
men. It is hard if we curtly turn aside and do not allow 
him to parade his knowledge of the foreigners' language, 
and if we deny him the pleasure of ordering about his 
neighbours on our behalf. 



8 DAYS IN ATTICA 

The carriage for country work is a landau solidly built. 
It travels slowly but is not uncomfortable. It is a pity 
that there are not more carriage roads in Greece. Pos- 
sible driving tours are very limited, though even as it 
is the Greek driver does cross-country work that would 
dismay an English coachman. Motor roads are few. 

The most independent way of traveUing is to bicycle. It 
is not an ideal country for cyclists, but there are some 
very good roads, notably the ride from Tripolitza to 
Sparta. Mr. Richardson (late Director of the American 
School in Athens) has written a paper on ^' The Bicycle in 
Greece,"^ in which he emphasizes the shortness of the 
distance from point to point, and says, "any good 
bicyclist would find it no great matter to leave Thebes 
and pay his respects to Athens on the first day, visit 
Corinth and Argos on the next, and sleep comfortably at 
Sparta the next night." 

It must be remembered, however, that in bad weather 
even the best roads get broken and there may be places 
where it is necessary to carry the bicycle. In case of 
mishaps it is better not to attempt a bicycle tour alone. 
For the solitary traveller mule-riding is preferable, as this 
implies the company of a muleteer. 

Railway travelling in Greece is very easy. There are 
few railways ; there is no through traffic, and seldom a 
crowded station. The carriages are comfortable ; the 
trains go at a quiet pace and keep good time. They pass 
through some of the most beautiful scenery in Greece. 
Nobody should miss the journeys from Corinth to Athens, 
and from Athens to Chalcis, both possible expeditions for 
a single day. 

Travel by Sea. — To visit the outlying parts of Greece 
you must make use of every class of boat. The first-class 
liners usually touch only at Corfu, Patras, and Piraeus. 

* R. B. Richardson, "Vacation Days in Greece." Smith, Elder 
& Co. 



TRAVEL IN GREECE 9 

Coast towns on the mainland and some of the larger 
islands are served by second-class European boats ; places 
of less importance by Greek steamers and sailing boats 
{caiques). The steamers that I have called '^ second-class 
European boats " are the smaller or older vessels of the 
well-known lines. They are cargo boats, slow and 
reliable, not carrying many first-class passengers. They 
remind one sometimes of the old-fashioned English inn 
on a deserted coaching road, that maintains a tradition of 
cleanliness and respectability for the few travellers who 
still make use of it. I always enjoy these boats for the 
variety of passengers on board : prosperous islanders 
returning to their homes, their smart wooden boxes, 
ornamented with gold paper and brass-headed nails ; 
peasants carrying their large bundles in the striped red 
and white rug of native manufacture ; perhaps a Greek 
priest full of local information and ready to offer the 
hospitality of his monastery at the end of half an hour's 
talk ; a minor Turkish official travelling with his harem to 
Janina ; a Greek police-officer coming to take up his 
duties in Crete now that the Italian gendarmerie is with- 
drawn ; or a group of booted Cretans going as a gang of 
workmen to mines or railway. 

Travel on the little native steamer is altogether less 
desirable. However, in the Greek islands the distances 
from point to point are short, and it is no great hardship 
to put up for one night with a dingy cabin or a close 
saloon where the oil-lamp swings viciously with each 
movement of the boat. On these steamers you must be 
prepared to supply your own food, for ^^ the eating is not 
in the ticket " (as I once heard it phrased). They run 
fairly regularly — that is to say, within one or two days of 
their advertised times — and are generally small and old. 
I remember making the voyage from Syra to Athens in a 
little 50-ton boat that had started life as an English yacht, 
somewhere in the forties. It had been sold at a sacrifice 



10 DAYS IN ATTICA 

'* because the owner's bulldog died on board." I suspect 
that there were also other reasons less strictly sentimental. 
But in good weather even these Greek steamers can give 
you pleasant journeys. There are mild nights when you 
can sleep in your long chair on deck ; there are hours of 
cheerful conversation on the bridge where the captain 
always makes you welcome ; and a cup of black coffee 
does not make a bad breakfast when served to the tune 
of an ^gean sunrise. 

Travel by caique is only possible in the summer, and 
even then much time may be wasted by calms and storms. 
I do not speak from personal experience, and I fancy that 
to enjoy it you must have something of the fatalistic 
Eastern temperament as well as a good constitution. I 
am told that without some experience of this sort it is 
impossible to understand the spirit of the Odyssey. 

One of the great characteristics of Mediterranean travel 
is the use of small boats for landing. In many cases it is 
impossible for the steamer to come alongside the quay, 
but there are plenty of big ports where the custom only 
continues because the boatmen are sufficiently formidable 
to make it very uncomfortable for any company that 
allows its passengers to land without their aid. I wonder 
how long this benighted state of things will be allowed to 
last. In Marseilles and even Naples more modern 
methods are used, and where the companies cannot bring 
their boats to the landing-stage they will send out their 
own tenders for the use of the passengers. 

I have made no mention of the large steamers run by 
English and German companies which now take pleasure 
cruises round coasts of the Mediterranean hitherto 
almost inaccessible. Travellers on these boats find 
themselves so well looked after that they need no advice 
of mine. 

For health a few precautions are necessary, and these 
are hardly peculiar to Greece. Suitable clothing may 



TRAVEL IN GREECE 11 

make a heavy pack, but it is essential to have a sufficiency 
of extra wraps. The difference in temperature between 
morning and evening is often emphasized by a difference 
in altitude. Perhaps you start from the plain in morning 
sunshine. As you climb the heat becomes unbearable ; 
yet the evening may find you some 4,000 feet up on 
Taygetus or Parnassos, and the end of the ride comes 
after sunset by damp rocks or through woods that have 
been in shade all the day. Your own vitality is lowered 
by the day's exertion, and, unless you wrap yourself up, 
the next day's ride will be cut short by chills or fever. 
With sufficiently warm clothing the sunset hour is not to 
be dreaded, except in the few marshy and malarious 
districts such as those in the neighbourhood of Kopais. 
The mosquito is, of course, the traveller's worst enemy. 
After April a mosquito net should be carried. The river 
beds are breeding grounds for malaria. A bathe among 
the oleanders at the end of a long day's ride is more 
alluring than prudent. If you follow simple precautions, 
do not get over-tired, and take quinine freely through the 
hot weather, you may rejoice in your travel without 
thought of fever. A few days in Athens between each 
journey send you back to country life with new 
strength and vigour. 

A chapter on travel in Greece would be incomplete 
without some mention of brigandage. Although the days 
of brigandage are over, there are still brigands in Greece ; 
that is to say, there are large tracts of desolate country 
in which outlaws are hiding from justice. Where the 
Englishman drinks himself stupid, the Greek drinks him- 
self furious. The sudden flare-up of a vinous quarrel 
usually ends in knives being drawn. One man falls. His 
opponent flies to the hills, often without w^aiting to see 
whether he has killed his man. The police pursue him, 
of course, but he has had a good start. His neighbours 
are too sympathetic, too conscious of their own fallibility 



12 DAYS IN ATTICA 

to reveal his whereabouts. In half the cases of this kind 
the murderer gets clear away. Hereafter he has a miser- 
able life, getting such food as he can by preying on a 
poor neighbourhood. In the end he either dies of starva- 
tion, takes ship to America, or in despair gives himself 
up to justice. A price is put on his head and occasionally 
he is shot. 

The fact that there is a lawless element at large in lonely 
places should not be ignored by the traveller, but the 
thought need never disturb his peace of mind. These 
outlaws are solitary men ; two may sometimes be found 
together, but as a rule there is no combination, no con- 
certed action, and no capital to back them. Without 
these things they can never become formidable. Such 
brigandage as there is need not affect Europeans, for the 
foreigner is well taken care of. Should the country be 
unsettled, as may happen near the frontier or round the 
Vale J,of Tempe, he will be warned, and an escort sent 
with him. " It is too expensive to touch a European," 
says the hungry outlaw with a regretful sigh. 



CHAPTER I 
CRETE 



THE NORTHERN PORTS 

CRETE in the sunrise ! That is where Greek 
history begins in the books, where it begins also 
for the happy traveller who can approach Greece 
by way of Crete. In travelling it is not always easy 
to make the most logical approach to your subject. 
Steamers and railways have a habit of disregarding 
history and sentiment, and those who care enough about 
obtaining the right sequence of impressions will find 
that they must forsake the main routes of travel. At 
the present time the simplest way of reaching Greece 
via Crete is to take one of the smaller Messagerie boats 
that run fortnightly from Marseilles to Canea, the capital 
of Crete, or an Austrian-Lloyd boat starting from Trieste. 
The first sight of the island is unforgettable. You 
step from your dark cabin in the early morning and 
find yourself in a luminous upper world, threaded with 
grey lines of zephyrous cloud and distant coastland. 
The newly-washed deck mirrors the glory, and the ship 
becomes a golden argosy bearing you into your first 
^gean sunrise. Around the horizon, hinted in faint 
grey, lies the well-known map of the Mediterranean 
translated into reality. On the left a rocky headland, 

13 



14 DAYS IN ATTICA 

Cape Matapan, shows the distant mainland of Greece. 
Nearer, looming grey and large, is Cythera, and on the 
distant southern horizon the smaller island, Anticythera, 
that cost the Roman world a shipload of masterpieces 
and kept them for the delight of our own generation 
(see p. i88). Behind Cythera the jagged line of Cape 
Malea, the most eastern promontory of the Peloponnese, 
can be seen on a clear day. Had our course been set 
for Athens rather than for Crete we should have headed 
close under this rock of evil name. Our steamer would 
have hooted greetings to the tiny hermitage perched 
where only goats should climb, and the lonely hermit 
who lives there would have rung his chapel bell in 
answer. 

The boat is heading south-east, and far away on the 
right — a glow of snowy peaks — the White Mountains stand 
to receive the first heartleap of recognition. So are the 
white cliffs of Dover to the Briton, and so was the tip 
of Athena's brazen spear on the Acropolis to the 
returning Greek mariner. Beneath the mountains lies 
Crete, beautiful, enticing, romantic. The island is little 
more than three successive mountain ranges — the White 
Mountains, Ida, and Lasithi, with the uplands at their 
feet rich in corn, wine, and oil. For the greater part 
of the year these mountains are capped with snow. 
Their outlines dominate the whole island. The high- 
lands leading up to them are pierced with luxuriant 
gorges. On the map, Crete seems shaped like a long 
boat ; its high, sharp prow points to the west, its curving 
stern to the east ; the straight keel is its inhospitable 
southern shore. Such harbours as it has are on the 
north, but, except for the one splendid natural inlet of 
Suda Bay, these were better for the light craft of antiquity 
than for our own deep-drawing steamers. 

In rough weather anchorage is uncertain in all Cretan 
harbours except Suda Bay, and few travellers would 



CRETE 15 

choose to be put ashore at Suda, where there is no town, 
no inn, and no regular means of communication with the 
nearest town (Canea). 

Canea, Rettimo, and Candia are the three ports along 
the northern coast. Canea lies most to the west and has 
a distinctly African flavour, owing to its intercourse with 
the Cyrenaica. Its name is a corruption of the classical 
Cydonia, and this again is embedded in modern Greek as 
the word for quince. If the Greeks knew quinces in the 
first instance as ^^ Apples of Cydonia," is it not possible 
that quinces were cultivated in prehistoric times and 
carried by the Minoans from Crete to Greece ? The old 
sea routes are little changed, and still as in Roman days 
there is a geographical connection between Crete and the 
province of Cyrenaica. As Sicily is the natural stepping- 
stone between Tunisia and Italy, so Crete is the step 
between' Greece and the Cyrenaic promontory. There is 
no direct steamer route along the coast of North Africa. 
An Arab from Benghazi, in charge perhaps of a consign- 
ment of butter for Alexandria, must leave his Italian boat 
at Canea and wait there for the Pan-Hellene that will 
carry him to Egypt. Captain Spratt, who made the 
Admiralty chart for Crete, and wrote two amusing 
volumes describing his travels on Cretan muletracks, 
m.entions that in the middle of last century he found 
a tribe of Benghazi Arabs settled in tents outside the 
town wall. 

To Canea also have drifted the African elements from 
other parts of Crete. The Egyptian soldiers of Mehemet 
Ali are said to have settled here at the close of the first 
Greco-Turkish war, and here are the remains of a black 
serf population, mentioned in Venetian archives, and 
connected by tradition with the Saracen invaders of the 
eighth and ninth centuries. Even from the sea the town 
has an African look. Six flower-like minarets rise from 
the undergrowth of domes and flat-roofed white houses. 



16 DAYS IN ATTICA 

Two palm-trees on the quay seem set there to say, 
'' Africa." 

But Venice has her mark here too. Around the town 
runs the encircling Venetian wall, its arms stretching 
partially across the harbour mouth, and its sloping ramp 
stamped here and there and here again with the Lion of 
St. Mark. Unless you are a blase traveller from the 
East, accustomed to the glow of dark faces and bright 
colours, I envy you the first morning in Canea. Boat- 
men in baggy breeches and bare legs ; black-bearded 
countrymen in high boots carrying themselves mag- 
nificently ; dandies with tightly gartered stockings of 
flamingo or canary colour ; full-blooded Ethiopians in 
sacks ; Arabs in flowing white from the Cyrenaica ; 
hundreds of cheerful brown boys with very little in the 
way of clothes and a great deal in the way of smile, all 
these you will see ; but the Russian, French, and Italian 
soldiers who used to mix with them have vanished 
together with their three flags that floated over the town. 
The Turkish flag flies no longer on that rock in the 
harbour of Suda Bay, the last place in Crete where it was 
shown. 

Steamers generally wait a day in Canea to take on a 
cargo of oil or wine, or to unload hardware, petroleum, 
and other luxuries of civilization. I once remember 
seeing several hundred tons of gunpowder put ashore 
from our steamer. There is not much sight-seeing to be 
done, but one can be very happy sitting in the public 
gardens, exploring the immense dark vaults of the old 
Venetian galley-houses, visiting the Turkish Cemetery, 
the local schools of weaving and embroidery, or driving 
out to the Governor's residence, a pleasant white villa, 
fronted with an avenue of giant marguerites and a 
meditative sentinel. Then when evening comes, if you 
are wise, you will not return to your boat for dinner. 
You will go to the little inn on the edge of the quay and 



CEETB 17 

order your meal on the unstable wooden balcony that 
juts over the water. As dusk falls, the lights from the 
black hull of your steamer throw spirals of gold into the 
smooth harbour ; each fishing boat shines like a glow- 
worm with its single light ; strange great moths of mauve 
and white and brown come round your little lamp. You 
lean your arms on the balcony and hear the waves against 
the wall. ^^ It's as good as Venice/' you say to yourself, 
" only — so much better." 

There are plenty of boats, Austrian, Italian, or coasting 
Greek steamers, to carry you on from Canea to Candia. 
A short intermediate stop will be made at Retimo, a 
town of local importance only. It lies higher than Canea 
and Candia, and looks more of a fortress as it rises from 
the sea — steep rocks crowned with the sloping Venetian 
ramp. It is the port of a large agricultural district, the 
capital of one of the four nomarchies of Crete. 

Cretan geography is delightfully simple. The island is 
so narrow that it is divided into four quarters, the 
divisions running north and south from sea to sea, each 
comprising a block of mountain and a northern port. 
First comes Canea and the White Mountains. Next 
Retimo with Mount Ida. Third Candia and Lasithi (but 
Mount Ida cannot help overlooking the Candia district 
as well as her own territory), and fourthly Hagios 
Nikolaos with the Sitia mountains and the port of Sitia 
(both mountains and port of less importance than those 
in the first three nomarchies). These divisions go back 
certainly to Venetian times, and probably eadier. Each 
capital is near a Roman site. Canea as we saw, answered 
to Cydonia ; Retimo is the classical Rethymnos ; Candia 
was the port for Knossos, and Hagios Nikolaos is on the 
site of Lato, one of the many small states of Eastern 
Crete. 

Candia approached from the sea seems a more compact 
edition of Canea, without its African element. Here the 



18 DAYS IN ATTICA 

Venetian walls hug the town more closely and enclose a 
smaller pool or harbour. It used to be the capital of the 
island, but since Canea was chosen as the seat of Govern- 
ment, Candia has a certain lofty provincialism that does 
not make it less attractive. There are fewer minarets 
against the sky-line ; there is less bustle on the quay than 
at Canea, yet on the whole its situation is more impressive. 
The Venetian fortification goes sheer down into the 
water — a magnificent front for the breakers. The town 
lies tilted with a slope towards the sea, that goes far to 
justify the perspective of those mediaeval artists whose 
pictures show every building in the town. Indeed, this 
sloping view of the city with the wall enclosing it, and 
the sea washing its rampart, always makes the approach 
to Candia seem like stepping into the inset of a sixteenth- 
century map. 

II 
IN THE CANDIA MUSEUM 

But mediaeval Candia must wait until the prehistoric 
treasures have been seen — treasures that have made the 
island famous, revealing it as the threshold of Greek 
history, nay more, as a complete cycle of history in 
itself. The collection is housed in a great white building 
standing to the east of the town, a conspicuous landmark 
as one approaches from the sea. 

Here is shown practically everything of interest that 
has been found in the island, making a series so com- 
plete that no other European museum (except perhaps 
Copenhagen) can rival it as a collection of national 
antiquities. It is true that Admiral Spratt collected a 
good many marbles of the classical period which are 
now in the British Museum or at Cambridge, but the 
vein of prehistoric antiquities had not been struck in his 



CRETE 19 

day, and it is the series of Bronze Age finds that is the 
glory of this treasure-house. 

For some time it had been suspected that Crete had 
played a great part in the Mycenaean age, but it was not 
until 1895 that Milchlofer's guess was verified. In this 
year Sir Arthur Evans explored Cretan villages, collected 
the " milk-stones " worn as charms by the peasant- 
women, and after studying the signs engraved upon 
them, came to the conclusion that there must have been 
a system of prehistoric writing in the island. While 
Crete was under Turkish rule it was hopeless to think of 
excavating, but he bought the hill of Kephala (Knossos) 
and staked out a claim against the day when it might be 
possible to excavate. The emancipation of Crete came 
earlier even than he had expected. In 1898 the island was 
occupied by the troops of the Allied Powers, and early 
in 1900 he and Mr. Hogarth began to dig in and 
around the Palace of Knossos. Almost at the same time 
Professor Halbherr lit upon a palace of the same period 
at Phaistos, less than thirty miles to the south-west. 
Other workers flocked to Crete, and from each excava- 
tion came new treasures for the collection. In ten years 
the nucleus formed in Turkish days by a patriotic group 
of local antiquaries had grown to a museum of world- 
wide fame. 

In those early days the moving spirit in that little 
society was a young doctor, Joseph Hazzidakis. To-day 
he is Director-General of Antiquities throughout the 
island and Keeper of the Candia Museum. He sits at the 
centre of the web, keeping touch with all that goes on in 
the different fields of excavation, assimilating new know- 
ledge and arranging new material, befriending the Euro- 
pean students who come to study in the museum, and 
directing the excavations that the museum yearly makes 
on its own account. He has the dignity characteristic 
of the older generation of Cretans. Like others who 



20 DAYS IN ATTICA 

have lived through the stormy times vaguely referred 
to as *' the troubles/' he has gained a quiet and cheerful 
self-reliance. Before the enrolment of the Cretan 
militia, the old Turkish barracks were used as the 
museum. The ancient Greek inscriptions were stored 
away in the disused rifle racks where somehow they 
seemed more at home than in the lofty halls which have 
now been built for them by some Greek architect 
dreaming of classical temples. 

Outside the museum door a row of Greco-Roman 
statues stand in exile. Once they were the pride of the 
collection : now they are turned into the cold to make 
room for the new wonders. Without even pausing to 
look at these, one mounts the staircase to the main hall 
where the prehistoric finds are skilfully arranged. 

There is something dramatic in the way in which the 
bronze " double-axe " set on a high pedestal dominates 
the hall. Ail the most striking objects are thus placed 
on isolated stands and the eye is helped in every way. 
Much time and thought have gone to making correct 
restorations. Instead of broken fragments lying in trays 
the clay vases have been put together ; the glorious stone 
basins, jars, and stands are restored to their original 
splendour. The frescoes are made intelligible by sketchy 
outlines filling in the missing pieces. Knowledge gained 
from one painting is used to help out another. A delicate 
ivory carving of a diving boy is placed in an upright glass 
case in which he is held poised in just the diver's posi- 
tion. The larger objects, great bronze cauldrons, painted 
sarcophaghi, and decorated jars are given less conspicuous 
places. The finer painted ware, the porcelain plaques 
and figurines, the seals, ornaments, gems, and all small 
objects needing close scrutiny, are set out in the best 
light in the central glass cases. 

The arrangement is not chronological but topographi- 
cal. The finds from Knossos are grouped nearest the 



CRETE 21 

entrance and continue half-way down the hall. Objects 
from the neighbourhood of Phaistos are to the right, and 
so forth. It is useless to describe the position in detail, 
for the number of new finds each year necessitates 
constant re-arrangement. For the same reason no satis- 
factory catalogue can be published, and it is well to take 
some modern book to read on the spot. For English 
readers Burrows' " Discoveries in Crete " and Hawes' 
^' Crete the Forerunner " are useful. Here I only 
mention a few of the most conspicuous objects. 

From Knossos comes the large gaming-board that 
catches one's eye on first entering, noticeable for its light 
blue and crystal inlay, combined with silver and gold and 
ivory. The design of the board is as elaborate as the 
ornament, pointing to an age like our own, when the art 
of amusement had become a complicated study. Yet 
this table belongs to a day that was old when Homer 
sang. 

Here is a set of small faience plaques showing dwelling 
houses two and three stories high, some with gable 
roofs and black timber wall-beams not unlike the ^' black 
and white " houses of Western Britain. Wood must 
have been plentiful when these houses were built, for 
timber is freely used. The round ends of the tree boles 
make decorative lines in the outer surface of the wall. 

Case after case is filled with pottery as graceful in out- 
line as the vases of later Greece. Most of them are 
decorated with rich glaze ornament in red or brown. 
The designer of to-day is beginning to find here a wealth 
of new suggestions. There are conventional patterns 
of scroll and spiral : sketches of growing flowers, a 
crocus or an iris, indicated by swift strokes of a brush 
handled with a deftness of touch almost Japanese ; shell 
and seaweed and the eight-armed polypus show possi- 
bilities of twirl and whorl that our own age has passed 
by. The colouring is for the most part bright and 



22 DAYS IN ATTICA 

effective. Here and there, time or chance, or some 
deeper artistic understanding has attained a masterpiece 
of mellow harmonies. Look, for instance, at some of 
the Zakro bowls and jugs where the colours blend from 
orange to rose, or at this frescoed olive in the glass case 
beside the door. It is only a small fragment with the 
design of an olive branch on a square foot of plaster. 
Each leaf is laid on in one light, detached stroke, and the 
colours are a harmony of cream, pale turquoise, and 
bronze. If art is "crystallized dehght," here is a real 
work of art telling of the maker's joy in this sombre 
spray. 

But it is not only their work, it is the people them- 
selves who are here. Draw aside the holland screens 
that cover the frescoes on the entrance wall, and there 
are the men and women of three or four thousand years 
^go, in colours almost as gay as when they were first 
painted, and drawn with a surprising swing and sharpness 
of characterization. 

The men are tall, nude, bronzed. They carry them- 
selves like kings. Their long hair curls over bare 
shoulders and touches a tight metal waist-belt. Their 
faces are beardless and aglow with vigour. The women 
(drawn, it must be admitted, by an inferior artist) look 
petite and effeminate, with large black eyes and mocking 
red lips. Here, as in all ancient art, the flesh of the men 
is red, the women white, and the convention corresponds 
to a difference of life and habit ; these men were hardy, 
open-air fellows, and the women delicate stay-at-homes. 
Even the "king " wears nothing in addition to his feather 
crown but a loin-cloth and belt, whereas all the women 
are over-dressed, over-decorated, over-curled, and, I am 
sure, over-scented. The women's quarters in the Palace 
at Knossos tell the same story. They are carefully 
planned, beautifully painted, and elaborately secluded. 
The pleasant eastern terrace, where the queen and her 



FLA TE I 




■¥-*<i'«5.'V".«^X<-'-.*. 




FIGURE OF SNAKE-CHARMER FOUND AT KNOSSOS 



CRETE 23 

ladies could walk, is screened from observation from the 
other parts of the palace. 

And yet, looking at the sprightly profiles on these 
frescoes, one realizes that the seclusion was not 
due to jealous Orientalism, but rather to a form of 
Minoan chivalry that sheltered a fine bloom of its 
civilization. These Minoan ladies are well educated. 
They have heard talk of men and affairs, and their 
delicate little noses have grown a slight upward tilt to 
mark their conscious superiority. The fresco with the 
massed tiers of women's faces shows that they were 
allowed to visit public amusements — bull-fights perhaps. 
They often laughed. And they often, Ariadne-like, took 
the law into their own hands and interfered successfully 
in affairs of state. There is something awe-inspiring in 
the wonderful porcelain figures, in big busby hats and 
furbelow petticoats, who brandish snakes and stare with 
fierce black eyes. Here is femininism run riot. Are 
they votaries of some ancient mother-goddess, or of the 
goddess Fashion only ? (Plate i.) 

The frescoes of the lily-white ladies suggest questions 
of life inside the palace. But what of the larger world 
outside ? What was the fabric of Empire on which 
rested all this finished social life ? This ruddy cup- 
bearer, he knows the answer. He stands here alert and 
smiling, his dark hair curling to his waist, his body 
slightly thrown back to balance the weight of the large 
golden cup that he carries : on his wrist the seal worn as 
a bracelet shows that he is some palace official. He tells 
the story of some great thalassocracy — a sea-empire. 
That is why the Minoan settlements lie unfortified : 
that is why their men are sunburned and virile, their 
women splendidly dressed, and their homes magnificent 
luxurious, secure : that is why their decoration loves the 
sea-creatures — the flying-fish, the octopus, the coral, the 
trumpet shell. 



24 DAYS IN ATTICA 

Early in Neolithic times, whilst the rest of Europe was 
still in a state of barbarism, there lived round the shores 
of the Eastern Mediterranean a race of men — small, 
swarthy, and long-headed — who already showed them- 
selves artists, traders, and explorers. While Assyria, 
Babylonia, and Egypt were each in turn rulers of the 
world, Crete had its empire also, not like these others, an 
empire of vast land territory, but a thalassocracy ruling 
the sea and the sea coasts, suppressing piracy and carry- 
ing on its trade with places as far apart as Ethiopia and 
Central Europe, as Assyria and Sicily. An island-empire, 
dependent solely on its power at sea, drawing its wealth 
from its native industry as well as from commerce — the 
historic parallel that at once suggests itself is that of 
England under Queen Elizabeth. One might fancy that 
the temper of the people was also somewhat similar — 
active, breezy, adventurous ; fond of sport, fond of dress, 
fond of dancing and amusement. 

The capital of this Cretan empire lay on the northern 
coast at Knossos, three miles from Candia. Other towns 
fringed the shores of the island, and settlements were 
made on the mainland of Greece and on the islands of 
the -^gean. The name of Minos is as proverbial in these 
waters as was afterwards the name of Solomon further 
east. He seems in the end to become the embodiment 
of all this far-reaching Cretan civilization ; and it is not 
unlikely that Minos became a kind of general title such 
as Pharaoh. An adjective has been coined from it and 
archaeologists divide the time of Cretan rule into Early, 
Middle, and Late Minoan periods. 

Outside the capital of Knossos the island must have 
borne a rich population. Fisherfolk fringed the shores ; 
smaller trading centres grew up in the few sheltered 
bays ; inland a population of farmers lived in solidly- 
built homesteads cultivating corn and oil. In the later 
days of the Minoan Empire the wealthy ruling classes 



CEETE 25 

had homes in the country and lived in beautiful villas 
such as those unearthed at Hagia Triada, on the south 
side of the island. Near it another palace has been 
excavated by the Italians (at Phaistos), which shows that 
here also was a great Minoan centre. Homer speaks of 
** hundred-citied Crete," and the extent of its trade tells 
the same story. The settlements of this age are unforti- 
fied. Those were the old spacious days when expansion 
of trade did not inevitably imply collision with the 
interests of other nations. 

From fishermen the Cretans became traders and soon 
monopolized the carrying-trade of the -^gean. By its 
position their island was well suited for this role. The 
high civilization of Egypt and Assyria met in Crete the 
instinctive artistic excellence of the Mediterranean 
peoples, mingled perhaps with some northern element 
that gave stability to the race. At all events the result 
was the production of a new civilization much tinged 
with Egyptian influence, but showing itself both in 
religion and in art simpler and more human than any- 
thing that came from Egypt. At Knossos one generation 
of artists succeeded another. Their painted ware and 
goldsmiths' work were prized throughout the Eastern 
Mediterranean. Their ships carried objects of art to 
other countries and brought home metals from the North, 
ivory and spices from the East. The character of their 
rule must at one time have been something like that of 
our East India Company — peaceful on the whole, fighting 
when necessary, not for territory but for trade. As the 
carriers of the Mediterranean they seem to have held the 
same position as that taken by the Phoenicians in later 
days. 

No doubt Crete was to Egypt the land of romance, the 
Ultima Thiile of their world. It and the other ^gean 
lands are spoken of on the Egyptian inscriptions by 
vague suggestives names : " the Ends of the Lands of the 



26 DAYS IN ATTICA 

Great Circle," the ^' Isles in the midst of the Very Green 
Sea." The long-haired, naked Cretans, with their beauti- 
ful wares, hailing from this distant land, struck the 
historian's fancy as something picturesque and unusual 
in Egypt, the land of flowing robes and stately head-gear. 
On the tomb of Rek-ma-ra, vizier to a Thothmes of the 
Eighteenth Dynasty, there is painted a procession of 
Keftians bringing gifts. They are naked, long-haired, 
slender ; blood-brothers to the cupbearer from Knossos. 

For some 2,500 years Crete was supreme in the ^gean. 
Naturally in so long a space of time there were inter- 
ruptions and disastrous incidents. Many of these have 
left their mark in the blackened walls and charred 
remains found at different successive levels in the palace 
of Minos ; on the whole, however, it seems that revolu- 
tions from within are more often responsible for these 
catastrophes than invasion from without. The invasions 
such as there were left no permanent scar since neither 
language nor religion were essentially altered. Ultimately 
a change came over the ^gean world and the centre of 
gravity passed from Crete to the mainland. About the 
middle of the fifteenth century B.C. Knossos was destroyed 
and sacked, and though reinhabited, never regained her 
former importance. Of the empire's long death struggle 
we know nothing, and for the catastrophe itself there 
is only the evidence of the blackened stones, and the 
sacked palace from which all the precious metals were 
looted. 

The story of Theseus embodies the memory of this 
civilization. It shows that the Greeks remembered a 
power alien, terrible, and splendid ; that they remem- 
bered a time when the ruler of Crete was in a position 
to exact the most mortifying tribute from Greece — a 
blood-tax of slaves from the youth of the nation. The 
excavations at Knossos have made it possible to illustrate 
this old legend from actual remains. We picture the 



CRETE 27 

long, open boat beached on the little bay beside the port 
of Candia, the convoy of youths and maidens from 
Athens, with Theseus, the king's son, among them, and 
the five miles of dusty open country across which they 
were driven to the great palace of King Minos at 
Knossos. This palace is made real to us by the actual 
remains excavated by Sir Arthur Evans, which still 
stand in some places as much as three stories high. 
For the most part it is made of a white gypsum, whose 
tiny crystals dance and twinkle in the sun. A palace 
of diamonds it must have been when Theseus saw it. 
It is fronted by a paved open space, finished with tiers 
of low steps. The steps do not lead into the palace, 
and seem more probably to have been placed there 
as seats for spectators. The open space in front would 
therefore serve as a kind of primitive theatre or dancing 
ground. Inside is the huge central court, surrounded by 
offices of state, the grand staircase and the throne-room 
in which there stands the chair of state on which King 
Minos sat, with stone benches for his counsellors round 
the wall. Beyond the throne-room is an elaborate series 
of offices and passages which are quite complicated 
enough to have served for the basis of the legend that 
this palace was a great labyrinth in which King Minos 
kept his monster the Minotaur ; and behind these again 
is the wide corridor backed by an imposing array of 
storehouses filled with jars of baked clay, each large 
enough to hide one of Ali Baba's thieves. Underground 
vaults there are too, and in these the prisoners would 
be housed until they were brought out to make sport 
for the royal household by an unequal contest with the 
bulls of King Minos. Various frescoes and reliefs found 
on the palace walls, which show that bull-baiting was 
a favourite sport at Knossos, may still be seen in the 
museum at Candia. 

In one relief the head of a bull is splendidly executed 



28 DAYS IN ATTICA 

in red plaster. A fresco shows a bull charging a girl 
athlete (Plate 2). A boy is turning a somersault on the 
animal's back, and another girl stands behind in an 
attitude indicating that her performance is safely over. 
These are no doubt professional toreadors who could 
take part in the sport with a fair chance of success if the 
bull were in any way trained for his part. The legend of 
the man-destroying Minotaur suggests a more barbarous 
pastime, when captives were led out to fight against a bull 
so fierce that their death was a certainty. It is for this 
that Theseus and his friends were stowed away in the 
innermost recesses of the palace. 

Then in the dear old story the heart of the Princess 
Ariadne is stirred with pity. Has she seen the file of 
fair-haired Greeks marched into the palace ? and has it 
been a case of love at first sight as her eyes singled out 
the prince among his comrades ? or has a rumour of his 
voluntary sacrifice touched her ? At nightfall she leaves 
her painted bedroom in the women's quarters under the 
eastern slope of the hill. She steals up the wide staircase 
and halts a moment before crossing the moonlit space of 
the great court. In her hand there gleams one of those 
famous Minoan swords with beautiful inlay along the 
blade and a design in low relief on the golden hilt. She 
finds her way to the prisoners' quarters, helps Theseus to 
kill the Minotaur, and then fearing the wrath of King 
Minos flies with Theseus and his companions to the sea, 
and together they embark for Greece. The story of 
Theseus's subsequent wanderings does not concern us 
here. It is hard to forgive the hero for leaving Ariadne 
desolate on Delos, still harder to forgive him for neglect- 
ing to hoist the white sail that was to betoken his success, 
and so save his father, old -^geus, from that despairing 
leap of suicide as he saw the black sail coming up the 
gulf. 

Naturally the legend is rounded off and polished as all 



iMife 



PLATE ri 







o ^ 

c/: - 

i/: ^ 

O :::■ 



s/ 



u 



o i 



Z ^ 



CRETE 29 

legends must be that have been tossed to and fro in the 
sea of tradition some three or four thousand years. It is 
only as a legend that it can be accepted. Still it is 
something that recent excavations have shown that what 
need not be true historically may still be true pictorially ; 
the great empire of Minos, his terrible bulls, his bewilder- 
ing palace, and the tribute of young Greeks, all these 
give an impression quite in harmon}'' with the civilization 
of the Minoan Empire revealed at Knossos. The 
numerous colour reliefs that show the very appearance 
of these old inhabitants of Crete have displaced rather 
crudely the vague dignified figures of our imagination. 
Instead of a grim, shadowy Minos, the gloomy judge 
of the underworld, the only king of Crete that we know 
is the youthful stalwart king in the fresco, with an 
elaborate head-dress surmounted by peacock's feathers, 
a crown of almost barbaric magnificence. What robes 
of state he wore we cannot tell. The male figures in 
Minoan art are nude except for a loin-cloth, metal girdle, 
and high boots. They wear long hair hanging down 
their backs. And Ariadne ? How are we to picture 
her ? Not in flowing Grecian draperies, but in elaborate 
Minoan costume, a costume that can be described only 
in the terms of the modern modiste. A tight-fitting 
jacket-bodice cut low in front to show the breasts, a very 
small waist, an elaborately gathered " bell-skirt," covered 
either with embroideries or with rows of flounces, a high 
brimless black hat that is something between the hat of a 
Greek priest and a soldier's busby ; this is the figure of 
the Minoan lady that has become familiar on gems and 
rings and in the little porcelain figures found in an 
underground shrine at Knossos. Or if the steeple-hat 
befits only the priestess or the witch, Ariadne may wear 
instead a disc of straw with roses under the brim, like 
those of the terra-cotta ladies from Palaikastro. 



30 DAYS IN ATTICA 

III 

THE VENETIANS IN CANDIA 

There are many places to love, but few to be in love 
with. The little port of Candia is one of those few that 
can kindle this passionate affection. Small and full of 
colour as a jewel, it holds in little compass an intensity 
of life. It seems less a harbour than a haven — not a 
busy centre of wholesale trade, but a refuge for all small 
craft running before the northern gales. Its entrance is 
a " needle's eye " for shipping, and none but the humble 
can pass its seaward gate. Steamers must wait outside, 
and the long-striding breakers of the ^' Very Green Sea " 
tumble mercilessly the heavy shore boats in which 
passengers land. But once inside the sloping batter of 
the Venetian walls there is a blue pool of peace, girdled 
with the swinging curves of the fishing craft and fringed 
with their intricate cordage. The Venetian ramparts rise 
out of the still water. A disused fort punctuates the end 
of the wall at the narrow harbour mouth. Useless as a 
fortification, it is invaluable as an ornament, for its light 
stonework catches the colours of dawn and evening and 
sends them down into the trembling waters of the 
harbour among the rainbow tints of the craft. Large 
boats cannot enter this cosy anchorage, so the caiques 
have it all to themselves. Goods for the more 
important towns are carried by regular steamers. The 
sailing boats supply the needs of the hundred smaller 
islands. I have seen one caique carrying a piano, and 
another laden with rush-bottomed chairs. It takes 
many chairs to make a cargo, and after the hold of 
the ship was filled they piled themselves on the poop 
and even began to climb the rigging, where they were 
lashed with cords. No effort was made to protect 



CRETE 31 

them from the water, and I wondered in what plight 
they would reach their journey's end. A cargo of un- 
glazed earthenware jars seemed to have even less 
chance of a happy arrival, since they also were 
travelling as deck passengers. 

There is still an Italian element in this old Venetian port. 
A couple of boats from Bari, larger and better manned 
than the Cretan caiques, have their home here, and almost 
monopolize the fishing, for the Candiots are by nature 
sailors rather than fishermen. These Bari boats may be 
seen any fine afternoon swinging round the harbour 
mouth. Even before the anchors are let down a dozen 
brown boys scamper up the rigging, and sit like monkeys 
on the lateen sails which they furl with hands and feet. 

Then there is the slim grey schooner which comes 
periodically from Sicily, bringing the precious sulphur 
for the vines, and gradually filling the harbour with her 
pale primrose dust. As soon as she is moored, planks 
are placed from her bulwarks to the shore, and over these 
a succession of half-naked brown figures run nimbly up 
and down. They wear sacks over their heads, and on 
these sacks they carry the bags of sulphur, which they 
pitch on to the backs of waiting donkeys. The process of 
unloading lasts a week or more, and by the time it is over 
the men are yellow, the donkeys are yellow, and the street 
from the harbour to the town is powdered with soft yellow 
dust. It is a fair sight, even at noonday, but wait till 
evening adds her own primrose light to the harmony 
and then see what magic that Sicilian sulphur ship has 
brought. 

Various captains saunter round the harbour, as beautiful 
as their boats and as miscellaneous as their cargoes. 
What cut-throats they look ! Yet most of them are 
really decent, hard-working fellows. This tawny giant, 
who wears a shirt of red flannel printed with large white 
lozenges, is the brother of our own housemaid. She 



32 DAYS IN ATTICA 

speaks of him proudly as a *' reformed pirate," and though 
I question both the reform and the piracy, I have no doubt 
that his innocent-looking blue and green Ariadne has 
seen some odd cargoes on her decks. I myself have seen 
a couple of hundred rifles carried on board at dusk. This 
is the romance of the retail traffic of the sea. Think 
of the adventures awaiting each man who owns a boat — 
the luck of the seas, the sudden squalls, the tempestuous 
venture, the safe return or the unknown end. Think of 
the little white towns hovering over their own watery 
reflections as they wait for these small consignments of 
civilization borne to them on the pointed golden wings 
of the caique. 

The spirit of the port has changed little since Venetian 
days. Then, as now, it was the scene of a hundred little 
activities. The Cretan galleys of the fifteenth century 
were merchantmen belonging to private owners. They 
exported the hot Cretan wine, honey, wax, cheese, cotton, 
and carved chests ; and brought back glass, tapestry, 
brocade, spices, and perfumes from the East. These were 
not all for home consumption. They were often for 
further distribution, for Crete was an entrepot of 
Mediterranean traffic. 

In those days Crete wa^ obliged to furnish Venice with 
two armed galleys for six months' service in the Adriatic. 
These were boats of private adventurers chartered and 
armed with boatmen at the expense of the Cretan Govern- 
ment. The Venetian archives are full of documents 
relating to these boats and to the commerce of Crete. 
They give a vivid picture of the Cretan captain waiting 
till the sea is clear of Genoese ships, darting up the 
Adriatic, offering tenders to the Venetian Senate, receiv- 
ing the cargo which is to be carried perhaps as far as Syria, 
and then leaving the lagoons with a certain fixed itinerary 
to which he must absolutely adhere. There was to be 
no turning aside to snap up a chance cargo, or some 



CRETE 33 

Venetian ship-owner might suffer. Venice was jealous 
of the privileges of her own ships, and the preference 
given to them was often the subject of formal complaint. 
She taxed the Cretan merchants heavily, and crippled 
enterprise by her grudging legislation. No Cretan ship 
could leave the harbour of Venice without consent of the 
Senate. At one time Crete was forbidden to grow its own 
corn lest it should become too independent ; at another 
the export of cypress wood was forbidden, lest the supply 
for ship-building should be exhausted. This last piece of 
legislation was made in the true interest of the island, but 
it was none the less galling to the merchants who suffered 
by it. 

In 1204 at the partition of the Eastern Empire (p. 217) 
Crete fell to the share of the Marquis of Montserrat, who 
sold it to the Venetians for one thousand marks of silver. 
The price does not seem excessive, though he parted with 
a sovereignty that was purely nominal. Venice having 
paid for Crete in hard cash treated the island as a mere 
business speculation. She taxed it as much as it could 
bear, and in return she protected the harbours and gave 
the country a government strictly impartial in its harsh- 
ness. To the Cretans she appeared a rapacious mistress. 
It was not till her protection w^as withdrawn that they 
found how much they had owed to her. 

In appearance Venice still rules the harbour. The Lion 
of St. Mark frowns a battered frown on the barefooted 
urchins who chase each other round the string-course of 
the old fort. On entering the custom-house any traveller 
who, at that exciting moment has eyes for the past, will 
readily see that the modern doiiane is built against the 
end of one of the Venetian galley-houses. The dark 
recesses of the interior, now used for storing bales, are 
covered by mediaeval vaults. The galley-houses are 
mostly in ruins, but one other still keeps its roof whole, 
and is conspicuous among the smaller buildings of the 

D 



34 DAYS IN ATTICA 

harbour. In Venetian days there were more than a dozen 
such here. They stood like gigantic stables down by the 
waterside, much as the ship-sheds for the Athenian 
triremes bordered the harbour of the Piraeus. Under 
these high-spanned vaults the Cretan galleys were built 
and repaired. The size of the building gives the scale of 
the boats they housed ; the high, upcurving hulls with 
their fin-like sweep of oars, the heavy, square-rigged 
masts, and the towers for archers in the prow. In the 
fifteenth century Candia had some fame as a ship-build- 
ing centre, and Venice ordered boats of the prized cypress 
wood to be built here for her own use. 

The Venetian town of Candia is now deeply embedded 
in the later Turkish houses, but here and there a corner 
of Venice comes to the surface. If once one begins to 
look out for her it is astonishing how often the West 
smiles out through the Eastern veil. The mosques cover 
churches. Turkish houses are set on Venetian founda- 
tions. A narrow Turkish street may hold a cloister wall, 
or a text from the Koran adorn an Italian fountain. One 
notable instance of Venetian work is the doorway, with 
a design of grapes and acanthus, hidden in a narrow 
street below the Eastern Telegraph office. Arches and 
plinths that must have belonged to the same Italian build- 
ing can be traced far down the side lanes. The luxury 
of telegraphing to England costs twopence-halfpenny 
a word, but considering this exquisite stonework at its 
entrance, and the panorama of sea and harbour from its 
windows, the telegraph office might safely double its rate 
without losing our custom. 

Across the middle of the present town there runs a 
solid line of masonry sometimes known as the old 
Genoese wall. The name is picturesque, but since the 
Genoese were only masters of Candia for five years it 
is not likely that they did more than set hand. to the 
building. It probably represents the wall of the first 



CRETE 35 

small Venetian settlement. It can be traced from the 
plateau in front of the old St. George's Gate, now 
known as the " Square of the Three Arches " (Tris 
Kamarais Square), to the open market-place in 
the centre of the town. Here it is interrupted for a 
space, then it continues again in the line of police 
barracks, after which it vanishes. The wall is made 
of a coarse yellow tufa, not beautiful, but solid and 
venerable. There are traces of towers set in the wall 
about 90 feet apart. Small houses have grown about 
its ruined top, gay and irregular as the yellow marigolds 
that have also come there uninvited. The bit of the 
wall that runs from the Tris Kamarais Square is broken 
by many small doors. Push open one of these, scramble 
over a heap of masonry or up a flight of garden steps 
and you will find yourself in the yard of a little house 
which is set on the top of the old wall. 

Like many another precious bit of old Candia the 
Genoese wall is fast disappearing. Between one visit 
and another we found a piece of it pulled down to make 
way for a modern house, whose owner preferred to use 
the old stones for a new building instead of perching 
airily on the top of the wall in the good old style. 

When the Venetian settlement outgrew the narrow 
space enclosed by the sea and this first line of wall, 
a number of houses settled outside the town and then 
the fortification of this larger burgh had to be con- 
sidered. The old wall was found ^'not only useless 
but also inconvenient and a hindrance," and in 1541 
the Italian engineer, Michele Sammichele, proposed 
destroying it altogether ^^ since the material would be 
useful for finishing the new fortifications." The dwellers 
within the older town resented this attack on their 
privileges, and a compromise was arrived at. The old 
wall was left standing, but one large breach was made 
for the main stream of traffic as well as a few smaller 



36 DAYS IN ATTICA 

openings at stated intervals along the wall. The " great 
breach " which was perhaps on the site of the old gate- 
way was now '^ embellished with a fine arch " and the 
open space behind it became the main square of the 
town. In this square was placed the beautiful fountain 
which is still the chief feature of Candia ; it has eight 
bays carved with tritons, dolphins, and sea nymphs. 
Four lions set back to back with water running from 
their mouths supplied the large basin. There is little 
water in the fountain now and the lions' mouths are 
grievously dry. 

The relation of the old wall to the newer outer wall 
is an amusing little bit of history ; the line of demarcation 
is always so jealously guarded by those dwelling within 
the pale, so scoffed at by those outside. Gerola in 
his fascinating volumes on the Venetian architecture 
of Crete has gathered together many documents bearing 
on this period. There were endless negotiations between 
the Cretan Government and the Venetian Senate as to 
the repair of the old wall and the building of the new. 
In 1465 the Cretan Government reports that it is 
"absolutely impossible to continue the building of 
the walls and towers " with the system then in vogue. 
The Senate replies by advising a new method of raising 
money : the expenses for the new fortifications are to 
be apportioned as follows, "one half from the nobles, 
feudatories, and citizens, and the other half from the 
Cretan Government and the Jews." Before long comes 
an appeal from Candia for more money and also for 
iron tools which are " difficult to procure in the island," 
and a notification that the gate in the old wall is "so 
weak that it could not be weaker." To judge from 
the depressing tone of these documents one would 
imagine that the work was almost at a standstill, yet 
in 149 1 a German pilgrim, Dietrich von Schachten, 
writes that the Venetians have a "beautiful big town 



CRETE 37 

ditch" and are making strong buildings upon it. 
Throughout the whole of the next century the people 
of Candia were busy with their fortifications. In fact 
the work never came to an end so long as the Venetians 
occupied the town. Now it is the sea that has ruined 
a bit of the mole and now the introduction of cannon 
has revolutionized the science of fortification and a 
new series of earthworks and redoubts have become 
necessary. From one cause or another completion was 
delayed. But still these great city walls are the proudest 
relic of the Venetian occupation. They will last while 
Candia lasts. There is something Roman in their 
magnificent permanence; they remain an enduring 
protest against everything shoddy and mean. Where 
Venice came she meant to stay and when she built 
she built for futurity. St. Mark's Lion set on gate and 
bastion seems to proclaim the pleasure of an artist 
signing a work that he knows to be good. 

While this work was going on outside, the interior 
of the town was also being enriched with good public 
buildings. Around the fountain square the old plans 
of Candia show the palace of the Duke, and the palace 
of the Grand Captain (the Duke being Governor of the 
whole island and the Grand Captain responsible only 
for the military welfare of the department of Candia). 
There was also the great Church of San Marco and other 
municipal buildings, including an armoury. All of these 
have disappeared except the church (which, as usual, 
has been turned into a mosque) and the armoury, which 
has had a varied history and which may still be seen 
a hundred paces further down the main street. It has 
been badly treated, but two beautiful arcades still remain. 
In order to mark the withdrawal of the Turkish troops 
in 1898 a large public library was planned, which should 
incorporate the fafade of this Venetian armoury. The 
work had already been begun when it was found that 



38 DAYS IN ATTICA 

the old walls would not bear the strain of the new 
building. The plan was abandoned and the armoury 
to-day stands uncertain of its fate. Its front is covered 
with whitewash, its lower arcade blocked with modern 
masonry ; but there is something fine in the sweep of 
its walls with their unmistakable Venetian batter and 
string-course, and even in ruin the arcades are good to 
look at. Behind them rises a lily-like minaret, showing 
its little red flag for the hour of prayer by day and a lamp 
for the evening prayer. 

The town is rich in Italian churches now used as 
mosques. The most beautiful of these is the Venetian 
Church of Santa Catarina, which stands near the gate of 
Gesu. You pass through this gate on the way out to 
Knossos. The church is a large basilica-like building, 
and one wonders if even in Venetian days a congregation 
could have been found to fill it, yet it was by no means 
their largest church. The Moslems have now boarded off 
one half of the interior to serve as an apotheke for 
mosque furniture — a queer collection of old benches 
and lamps and banners. The partition wall and the other 
woodwork of the mosque at the end of the building are 
painted in soft, faded tones of emerald and turquoise. 
The floor is carpeted with pale yellow matting and above 
there are rows of tiny lights set low. A raised da'is leads 
up to the Moslem Holy of Holies, which has been placed 
cornerwise across the east end of the church that it may 
point to Mecca and not to Jerusalem. Beside it the 
invariable mosque clock with Turkish dial swings an 
enormous pendulum, and all around shine the intricacies 
of blue and purple tilework. It is these Persian tiles that 
are the glory of the present building, and have earned 
fame for it as the Blue Mosque of Candia. Evening service 
in this mosque is an unforgettable experience. All is in 
gloom except the east end where cool tiles mirror the 
few tiny lights. Here, while their leader reads from the 



CRETE 39 

Koran, half a dozen stately old Moslems stand, or bend, 
or prostrate themselves. There are silent pauses while 
the long figures stoop and kiss the ground. No music 
and no word from the congregation, only the one droning 
voice and the intervals of silence. 

At the foot of the old square, outside the Blue Mosque, 
are fragments of a marble screen and headless Christian 
saints, who were probably turned out to make way for the 
Persian tiles. They were once adapted to the uses of a 
fountain, but its basin is now dry and the saints guard 
only the lettuces and artichokes of a little vegetable stall 
that has come to live beside them. 

The mosque on the site of that which was once the 
Church of San Marco is worth visiting for the sake of the 
odd column bases in the interior. They are shaped like 
inverted Corinthian capitals. On the steps of this mosque 
a number of old Turkish ladies sit cross-legged beside 
piles of home-woven goods : carpets, aprons, and gay 
stockings, which they offer for sale. They are very friendly 
and very merry, and they seem to enjoy themselves in 
their shady corner where they can gossip and watch the 
life of the square. 

Another old church which apparently was too much 
ruined by the siege to serve as a mosque is the Church of 
San Rocco, which stands down by the port. It seems to 
have been round in plan with a cloister outside. The 
cloister now serves for a mason's yard, and is full of 
Turkish tombstones. The church itself is a mere store- 
house. A church of San Rocco always betokens Venetian 
occupation. A native of Montpelier, San Rocco (Saint 
Roch) lived in the fourteenth century. He travelled 
throughout Italy and showed wonderful powers of nursing 
and healing the plague-stricken. After death his remains, 
treasured at Montpelier, continued to work miracles 
in cases of epidemic. Venetians, with their numerous 
possessions in the Levant, were particularly likely to suffer 



40 DAYS IN ATTICA 

from the plague, and in the fifteenth century a party of 
pious Venetians, visiting Montpelier as pilgrims, managed 
to steal the saint's body. This was brought to Venice 
with great rejoicing. A church and hospital was founded 
for the saint, and Tintoretto's glowing frescoes are still 
to be seen on the walls of the Scuola di San Rocco in 
Venice. Whether the stolen relics continue to work 
miracles in their new surroundings we are not told. 
At all events, here in Candia his church is set with 
intention close down by the harbour. Plague always 
comes first to a port, and before reaching the town that 
deadly enemy would find itself confronted with a saint 
who had the reputation of a specialist in such matters. 

In 1645 the Turks invested the town and for twenty- 
four years the city walls stood the test of the longest siege 
in history. An interesting memorial of this siege is found 
beside a little open square in the south-west corner of the 
town. Here is a pretty fountain decorated with four 
Corinthian capitals and bearing a Latin inscription dated 
1666. This tells how the Providatore Generale Antonius 
Piolus obtained a new source of water for the citizens 
and gave them this fountain after the town had been 
besieged ^' four times five years," when the water supply 
seemed about to fail. 



IV 

CANDIA OF TO-DAY 

'The Candia of to-day still looks like a Turkish town, 
though a few modern " European " buildings are rising. 
One notes with sadness that new houses imitate those of 
modern Athens and forsake the pleasant courtyard style 
so appropriate to a hot climate. A European house has 
its best face to the street; a Moslem's house turns its back 



CRETE 41 

to the public. A passer-by would hardly guess at the jars 
of growing flowers, the fountains, fruit trees, and courts 
of inlaid pebbles that wait behind the closed doors in 
those blank, high walls. 

The heart of the town is still the market-place outside 
the Turkish gate. Sometimes one hears the square 
dignified by the name At Meidan, much as if one came 
across a Trafalgar Square in some small Indian province. 
To it all the traffic converges, and from it the roads branch 
off north, south, east, and west. It is good to turn here 
about eight o'clock in the morning, to find the market 
smelling of hot loaves, and to watch the world buying its 
breakfast. Rings of bread on trays, fruit, vegetables, and 
mizethra on the stalls, baskets of fish from the harbour, 
and basins of white Turkish curd ; here they are appealing 
to eyes and nostrils, and to ears too, for each salesman 
cries his wares with its own especial adjective : " Shellfish 
of the moment," " Beautiful oranges," " Fresh bread," are 
shouted up and down the street. The giaourti seller alone 
does not need to call for attention. In his yellow shirt 
and green stockings he walks silently by, balancing on his 
head a triple tray, and each tray bears a dozen basins 
of curds. Whatever our nationality we all rush to buy 
giaourti. The trays are emptied almost as soon as he 
appears. 

The world here is more magnificently staged and 
dressed than in a theatre. There is hardly a black 
coat to be seen. The Cretans are still proud of their 
national costume ; their hanging breeches, and waist- 
coats with converging lines of buttons. They carry 
themselves magnificently, with a slight swagger that sets 
the dark blue drapery swinging and displays broad 
shoulders and slim hips. Round the thin Cretan waist 
a thick red or purple sash is wound. The countrymen 
wear top-boots, black or yellow, according to the season ; 
the townsmen prefer a pair of tight stockings in some 



42 DAYS IN ATTICA 

exquisite rainbow shade of apricot, canary, or green. It 
is no good hoping to possess such stockings yourself. 
They are no more to be bought to order than the rain- 
bow itself. No shop sells them, but " sometimes you 
find a man who brings them to the town." This was all 
the information we could gather, and though visiting 
Candia at all seasons of the year we never saw that 
swarthy pedlar with his gaudy wares. 

In a bird's-eye view of the town this market-place would 
look like the centre of a coloured star, brilliant, clamorous, 
kaleidoscopic. The rays of the star pierce the side lanes, 
carrying animation down the " street of the bootmakers," 
*' the street of the tailors," " the street of the hammerers," 
and so forth. And between the rays are silent blocks of 
houses, their plaster tinted with beautiful faint old shades 
of mauve and cream and green ; upper stories launched 
out across the street on crumbling grey timber supports ; 
and windows filled with deca^dng lattice work. The high, 
blank walls of these Turkish houses give a prisoned feel- 
ing to the lanes. There is neither bright sunlight nor 
sharp shadow, but a reflected half-light everywhere. In 
spring a pervasive smell of orange blossom tells of the 
gardens hidden behind the walls. Occasionally, a Moslem 
woman in a black veil flits along, like a black bundle, from 
one door to another. The sombre effect of the street is 
heightened by her featureless humanity. It is remarkable 
how seldom one sees women in the main streets of Candia. 
The Christian women seem even more home-keeping 
than the Moslems who have the protection of the veil. 
** Walking across the market-place in Candia feels like 
going into the Union without your brother," so I once 
heard an English girl describe her impression of the 
Moslem atmosphere in the town. 

Crete is the land of feuds, the true " Isle of Unrest." 
In the eighth and ninth centuries it was the Saracens and 
Byzantines who fought here, then the Genoese and Vene- 



CRETE 43 

tians, then the Venetian and Turk. Now it is Turkey 
and Greece who claim her, "and the end is not yet." 

The distinction between Christian and Moslem intrudes 
itself even before landing. Among the bumping hubbub 
of boats that flock round the incoming steamer there are 
always Christian boats for the Christians, and Moslem 
boats for the Moslem passengers. The Moslem wears 
a fez or scarlet handkerchief on his head, and twists a red 
belt round his waist. The Christian prefers the various 
shades of indigo so freely used on the island and wears 
a dark sash. The feud is embittered by the fact that here 
the division is not racial but religious. With a few 
exceptions the Moslems in Crete are not Turks by birth, 
but Cretans who embraced Islam at the time of the 
Turkish conquest. They seem to have belonged to the 
town population, whose sense of nationality had already 
been weakened by dependence on the Venetian foreigner. 
In some cases, perhaps, they had Italian blood in their 
veins and bore Italian names. Such are still found in 
the Island : Pasquale, Cornaro — even Dandolo. The 
countrymen with farms lying unprotected in the lowlands 
would also wish to gain the protection of the Turk by an 
outward conformity to his religion. The Moslems, there- 
fore, are found in and around the larger towns. The hill 
villages are, and always have been, Christian. One can 
guess how the hardy Cretan hillsman hated his time- 
serving brother of the plains. 

For two centuries these parties have lived side by side, 
making Crete a sort of political barometer sensitive to 
record the state of affairs in Europe. The Greek War of 
Independence was answered by risings of the Christians 
in 182 1 and 1828. The insurrections of 1856-8 and 1869 
corresponded to revolutions on the mainland of Europe, 
especially the long struggle for the liberation of Italy. 
The Greco-Turkish War opened with the Christian risings 
of 1896-7. 



44 DAYS IN ATTICA 

The signs of that last outbreak are visible on first land- 
ing in Candia. The main street leading from the harbour 
to the square is still in ruins. It was sacked and burned 
by the Turks as an answer to the rising of 1896. Barrels 
of petroleum were opened, and flames poured down the 
sloping street. When I first came here in 1904, the 
broken walls were as desolate as Pompeii. It is better 
now, and each year new houses are being built on the 
old sites. At the foot of this unhappy-looking street there 
is an open plateau where the Venetian gate lately stood. 
This gate vanished in 1897, ^^^^^ ^^^ ''affair of the custom- 
house/' when the British troops who were taking over the 
Customs from the Turkish authorities were surrounded 
and killed. The British fleet arrived the next day, and 
Admiral Noel's wrath is still remembered. He shipped 
off the whole Turkish garrison, hanged the chief offenders 
on the town wall, and utterly demolished the gate that 
had witnessed their treachery. Since that day there has 
been an exodus of Moslems from the Island ; the well-to- 
do have settled in Constantinople and other great centres; 
the artisans seem to have found homes in Asia Minor, 
where the liquorice trade of Sokhia is in their hands, and 
on the site of ancient Cyrene where Turkish-speaking 
Cretans live to-day. Those who still remain in Candia 
are a friendly, peaceable folk, and perhaps the old 
jealousies are being forgotten. At our last landing we 
found a young Turk pulling bow oar in our Christian 
boat — a sign of better times coming. Now that Cretan 
deputies are sitting in the Athenian Parliament the 
fatalistic Moslem population is learning to submit to 
the inevitable. 



CRETE 45 

V 
PHAISTOS AND COUNTRY TRAVEL 

Stay in the town of Candia long enough to get by 
heart its brilliant harmonies ; haunt the museum and 
dive into its enchanted ocean of history ; visit Knossos 
and study there the background against which that 
vivid Minoan civilization moved ; then say good-bye to 
town life, hire mule or pony, and set out with light pack 
and lighter heart to enjoy the unsurpassed loveliness of 
the island in spring. Whether you are interested in 
archaeology or botany, in geology or in mere human 
nature, you will find enough to content you in the 
Cretan countryside. 

Even if there be time for nothing else, ride across the 
hills to the great Messara Plain, put up at Gortyna — 
where you can wash in a Greek sarcophagus, and sleep 
in a guest-chamber approached by a staircase of ancient 
Doric capitals — and then ride on next day to Phaistos 
and Hagia Triada, where Italian scholars have unearthed 
the homes of the Minoan princes of Southern Crete. 

In the situation of Phaistos there is something that 
suggests the Acropolis of Athens. The Messara, like the 
Cephissian Plain, is oval-shaped, surrounded on three 
sides by hills and on the fourth by the sea. In both 
plains the Acropolis is set at the seaward end on a 
ridge of rock, its sharp front cutting into the valley 
like a ship's high prow. Here the resemblance 
ends, for whereas in Athens the white houses of the 
town rise surf-like around the foot of the cliff, at 
Phaistos the Acropolis drops to a calm green ex- 
panse of corn-land. The plain of the Cephissus is stony 
and dry though olive-studded. The Messara Plain is 
for months of the year knee-deep in flowers, and has 



46 DATS IN ATTICA 

more spreading olive groves from which rise the chimes 
of sheep-bells and nightingales. In Athens the Acropolis 
is a fortress ; at Phaistos it is a palace. The Athenian 
buildings rise conspicuous from every point. At Phaistos 
the ruins lie low on the lower end of the ridge, and we 
must turn the crest of the hill before we can look down 
on the great courtyards, cool terraces, and magnificent 
tiers of steps. These steps are wonderful, wider and 
shallower than any modern palace dreams of. Oh, to 
see one of those supple, swarthy Minoan princes come 
stridmg down that staircase ! the processions and the 
dancing and the ritual of waving boughs! Is there no 
magic of moonlight that can bring them back to life as 
we see them on the gold rings and seal stones and vases ? 

This one great palace did not content those luxurious 
princes of Phaistos. The Messara Plain becomes an 
oven during the summer months, and it seems to have 
been for the sake of escaping the excessive heat that they 
built another settlement an hour's ride from Phaistos in a 
cooler spot. On the southern end of the same rocky 
ridge, with a wide outlook towards the sea on one side 
and the snows of Ida on the other, the Italians are now 
excavating a series of villas of the same period as the 
palace. This group of country houses is now known as 
Hagia Triada, after the little Venetian Church of the 
Holy Trinity which was the only building on the spot 
when the excavations were begun. It is here that the 
most interesting finds were made. The site proved rich 
in small objects which had been scarce at Phaistos. The 
painted sarcophagus, the carved stone vases bearing 
figures in relief, the ingots of copper stamped with 
Minoan characters, and many other remains of astonish- 
ing excellence now to be seen in the Candia Museum, 
were originally found at Hagia 'iriada. 

The well-known fresco of the wild cat stalking a 
pheasant comes from a set of rooms that may well have 



CRETE 47 

belonged to the princess of the reigning house. Her 
apartments are set to the north, and from the cool terrace 
outside there is a view of sea, and snow mountains that 
sets one thinking of Etna's white slopes against the blue 
sea and coast of Sicily. The rooms here are small and 
must have been as exquisite as they were tiny. The little 
light-well set round with three columns each of a different 
marble and the diminutive doors and passage suggest the 
toy-home of a petted little Minoan lady, dainty as Japan 
and gay as Paris. 

These palaces of the southern kingdom throw reflected 
glory on the rulers of Knossos. If princes who were 
but underlings lived in such luxury, how great their over- 
lord must have been ! One wonders how close was the 
connection between north and south. How many times a 
week, a month, a year, did the messengers from Knossos 
canter across that wild moorland region and clatter 
down the rocky gorges of the hill barrier ? That the 
Minoans had horses is known from a seal impression 
found at Knossos. It shows a horse — perhaps imported 
from Africa — being brought to the island in a large open 
boat. 

Travel in Crete needs little preparation. Although it is 
real travel (not a mere committing of yourself to the 
charge of railway and hotel officials) it brings small hard- 
ship and much delight. Except at the coast towns, 
Canea, Retimo, Candia, Sitia, there is no regular inn. 
In a village of any size hospitality is offered by some 
well-to-do peasant, who is probably pleased at the novelty 
of the visit and prides himself on making lavish 
entertainment. 

A day's riding in any part of the island will give 
plunges from one scene to another. At one time you 
may be on a limestone plateau covered with white 
boulders and grey scrub. Then you will drop through 
thickets of myrtle and arbutus to the oleander valley where 



48 DAYS IN ATTICA 

a little cataract tumbles and the nightingales sing at high 
noon. Constantly in sight of the sea, seldom on the 
level, and never on a carriage road, the rocky paths of 
Crete probably follow the tracks used for four thousand 
years. The famous forests of cypresses and cedars 
have vanished, and the hills which they once covered 
are barren. The soil collected by their roots has been 
washed into the river valleys, leaving the upper slopes 
to the rocks and rock plants. The flowers belong to 
three continents, Europe, Africa, and Asia. Even for 
one who eyes them only as illuminations beside the 
text of travel they are sufficiently gorgeous. 

The cities of Crete are made to delight a mediaeval 
mind. They are surrounded by magnificent walls filled 
with buildings of Venetian and Turkish architecture with 
hardly a modern house to be seen. Here there is no gentle 
yielding of town to country, and, except at Canea, 
nothing in the way of a suburb. The town has in many 
cases shrunk back from the city wall, but has never 
flowed beyond it. Through the dark tunnel of the gate 
you pass at once into the open country of corn and 
flowers. 

The villages have no walls, but they also end abruptly. 
The houses cluster together for mutual protection. 
Around them lie the olive groves and cultivated lands. 
There are few scattered farm-houses, save in the west of 
the island. The country between one village and another 
has an awesome loneliness that reminds one of the days 
not so very long ago, when battle, murder, and sudden 
death waited for solitary travellers on the country roads. 

The country folk are charming. They have simplicity, 
dignity, humour, and, in the east of the island at any rate, 
an unvarying friendliness. Class distinctions are for- 
gotten outside the towns, but it is no drawback to be 
provided with introductions from Cretan notables. The 
hospitality offered is various. In one week we were the 



CRETE 49 

guests of a bishop, an abbot, an officer of gendarmerie, 
and a cheesemonger. In each case we were treated so 
hospitably that it disturbed us to reflect on the expense 
and trouble to which our hosts had put themselves and 
for which we could offer no immediate recompense. 

A Cretan April has something of the atmosphere of 
Chaucer's spring mornings — a certain indescribable,, 
inexplicable hopefulness. The country still seems very 
young in spite of its four thousand years of civilization. 
Its new birth counts almost within the decade, and its 
history is still in the making. Modern events move so 
fast that each spring sees some fresh development in the 
political situation. Crete to-day has perhaps something 
of the charm that drew poets to Italy in the middle of 
the nineteenth century — the charm of a political drama 
acted by beautiful people on a beautiful stage. Patriotism 
is still a passion on this island, for which men died 
yesterday and are ready to die to-morrow. 



CHAPTER II 
THE THIRSTY ARGIVE PLAIN 

I 

NAUPLIA 

THE approach to the Greek mainland shows a 
succession of powdery white headlands, barren 
and shapely. Fertile plains and wooded hills are 
hidden away inland. Greece fronts the outer world with 
a classical severity. Her beauty is not the obvious, 
delicious loveliness of moister climates : it is joy of 
form rather than wealth of decoration. After the subtle 
modelling of a grey Greek mountain the Alps seem like 
nouveaux riches with their unrestrained purples, their 
noisy gorges, and dazzling heights. 

Nor would I exchange the nudity of Greece for the 
luxuriant draperies of Italy. Forgive me, Italy ! The 
comparison was thrust upon me here by the very name 
of the bay to which our Greek steamer is heading, 
Nauplia, " Napoli di Romagna" as the Venetians called it. 
This little Greek Naples lies at the head of a long gulf 
almost land-locked by the eastern headlands of Argolis. 
The rocky island of Spetzia lies like another Capri at the 
entrance to the bay. 

The citadel watching the bay, 
The bay with the town in its arms, 
The town shining white as the spray 
Of the sapphire sea-wave on the rock, 
Where the rock stars the girdle of sea 
White-ringed .... 

50 



THE THIRSTY ARGIVE PLAIN 51 

Had Meredith seen Nauplia in a vision when he wrote 
those Hnes ? They are all here : the bay, the citadel, the 
town, the rock. 

Behind the town rises the sharp beak of the citadel hill 
(Palamidi). Here on the Feast of St. Andrew we saw 
citizens climb at daybreak to celebrate their Panegyris. 
The fortress on the top is a prison where criminals are 
kept in barred cells round an open courtyard. Six or 
seven are shut up together and press for front places at 
the bars, that they may hold out for sale the bone knives 
and beads that they have carved. It is a black contrast 
to the crowd of virtuous citizens who dance on the hill- 
top a hundred paces away. The castle-crowned rock in 
the harbour (Itsh-kaleh) is also a place of grim association, 
the home of the public executioner. 

The town itself is a pleasant place where one can stay 
in comfort for some days, visiting Epidaurus (one of the 
most famous rest-cures of the ancient world) and the 
homes of Homer's heroes : Tiryns, Argos, Mycenas. 

Tiryns lies on a long, low ridge, rising abruptly from 
the flats by the shore. It is not a natural fortress, but 
its ancient masters once turned it into an impregnable 
stronghold. The outer walls are made of giant blocks of 
masonry, huge enough to give rise to the legend that they 
had been piled together by the hands of Cyclops. The 
main approach winds half round the fortress, so 
that though the chief gateway lies to the east a stranger 
entering the palace would find that the road had led him 
round the south angle of the building, so that he finally 
entered from the west, having passed three successive 
gates and three courtyards. The last court brought him 
opposite the hall of the ancient palace, the megaron, 
where the square of the central hearth is still marked by 
the bases of four columns that supported the roof. By 
this hearth the master of the house would have his seat, 
and often the lady also. When Od3^sseus reached the 



52 DAYS IN ATTICA 

country of the Phaeacians, the Princess Nausicaa directed 
him to her father's palace, and the brief words in which 
she described to him the home-scene make a picture that 
fits well the outline of Tiryns : — 

" But when thou art within the shadow of the halls and 
the court, pass quickly through the great chamber, till 
thou comest to my mother, who sits at the hearth in the 
light of the fire weaving yarn of sea-purple stain, a 
wonder to behold. Her chair is leaned against a pillar 
and her maidens sit behind her. And there my father's 
throne leans close to hers, wherein he sits and drinks his 
wine like an immortal." 

But though the lady of the house might share her 
husband's hearthside seat, the women's apartments lay 
in another part of the palace, removed from the coming 
and going of the chief rooms. Here at Tiryns they are 
found behind and a little to the left of the men's inegaron. 
The women's megaron is a smaller building, marked by 
the same square hearth in the centre. There seems no 
direct communication between the two, although but a 
single wall divides them. The women's rooms are 
reached by a side entrance from the open forecourt, 
and in order to go from the men's to the women's 
inegaron it is necessary to pass right round at the back 
of the men's megaron through a number of small rooms, 
probably the household offices. The first of these is the 
bathroom, where the guests in Homeric story are con- 
ducted on first arrival. This must be the reason why 
it is placed so near to the main living-room. It is a 
small, square chamber, the floor composed of one huge 
stone slab, and on this was placed the bath of baked 
clay, an oblong tub perhaps decorated with brown paint, 
such as has been found in other Mycenaean houses. A 
stone pipe carried off the waste water from a square 
gutter in the floor. The walls seem to have been panelled 
with wood — altogether a noble bathroom and no doubt 



THE THIRSTY ARGIYE PLAIN 53 

one of the most important places in the house. Beyond 
the women's apartments run dark galleries with sloping 
roofs ; they are built in the thickness of the wall and 
may have served as magazines for storing provisions and 
household goods. The shepherds in later days have 
found them a welcome fold for their sheep, and the 
walls have been rubbed by soft, oily fleeces till they 
shine. Altogether a roomy, hospitable house, with large 
forecourts, where dependents could come and go, or 
petitioners wait ; with ample accommodation for house- 
hold and guests ; and with these great store-chambers 
for the hoarded wealth of the kings. The walls of the 
chief living-rooms were probably gay with frescoes, their 
doors decorated with slabs of inlay, the floors in some 
instances ornamented with cobbles fixed in lime and 
perhaps coloured. The lower slope of the hill was no 
doubt devoted to the military needs of the settlement. 

There are so many points of obvious resemblance 
between this type of house and those described in the 
Odyssey and Iliad, that one would like to think of 
Tiryns as one of the very homes for which the Argive 
heroes sighed. At any rate, here is a type of house that 
lasted long and was known in many different parts of the 
Mycenaean world. At Mycenae, and at Gla in Bceotia, 
much the same ground-plan is found. Even the old 
house of Erechtheus on the Acropolis at Athens rhows 
remains of the same central hearth with its four supp 3rting 
pillars. 

The ground round Tiryns was, and is still, well suited 
for cultivation. It was, in fact, once chosen as the site 
for an agricultural college, and to that epoch belong the 
slender dark cypresses that become so familiar in the 
views of Nauplia. The palaces that Homer knew were 
surrounded not only with farmland, but also with what 
we should call a pleasure garden. I should like to fancy 
the goodly palace of Tiryns set round with a pleasaunce 



54 DAYS IN ATTICA 

such as he describes around the palace of the Phaeacian 
king :— 

^' Without the courtyard, hard by the door, is a great 
garden, of four ploughgates, and a hedge runs round on 
either side. And there grow tall trees blossoming — pear- 
trees and pomegranates, and apple-trees with bright fruit, 
and sweet figs and olives in their bloom. The fruit of 
these trees never perisheth, neither faileth winter nor 
summer, enduring all the year through. Evermore the 
west wind blowing brings some fruits to birth and 
ripens others. Pear upon pear waxes old, and apple 
on apple, yea, and cluster ripens upon cluster of the 
grape, and fig upon fig. There too hath he a fruitful 
vineyard planted, whereof the one part is being dried 
by the heat, a sunny plot of level ground, while other 
grapes men are gathering, and yet others they are treading 
in the winepress. In the foremost row are unripe grapes 
that cast the blossom, and others there be that are grow- 
ing black to vintaging. There too skirting the furthest 
line, are all manner of garden beds, planted trimly, that 
are fresh continually, and therein are two fountains of 
water, whereof one scatters his streams all about the 
garden, and the other runs over against it beneath the 
threshold of the courtyard and issues by the lofty house." 

This is a picture of Tiryns as it may have been in the 
day of Homer's heroes, and the site, as Schliemann left 
it after his excavations, gave a good impression of the 
typical Mycenaean palace. During the past few years 
the German Institute of Archaeology has carried on 
fresh excavations, and the results show that they were 
right in supposing that Schliemann had by no means 
exhausted the site. They have brought to light traces 
of a lower town surrounding the citadel, and beneath 
the Mycenaean palace they have found older buildings. 
In this earlier settlement there were frescoes allied in 
subject and in treatment to the frescoes found in the 



PLATE 11 r 




> = 



O 



< „ 



5 E- 



THE THIRSTY ARGIVE PLAIN 55 

great palace at Knossos (see p. 22), and there were also 
two great halls with painted stucco floors. The mural 
paintings have been broken into innumerable fragments, 
and the labour of reconstruction is increased by the fact 
that it is very seldom that two fragments actually join. 
Blue and brown are the predominating colours, and 
there are bright touches of red. When this gigantic 
jig-saw puzzle has been put together with missing 
pieces indicated by the same clever artist who restored 
the frescoes at Knossos, it is hoped that the paintings 
from Tiryns will be another great feature for the 
National Museum at Athens. The reconstruction has 
already advanced sufficiently to show that in the earliest 
palace there was a life-size procession of warriors ; 
from the Mycenaean palace comes a spirited boar-hunt 
(Plate 3), with women watching the scene from a safe 
distance in chariots. Once more one marvels at Time's 
trickery, which has taken from us every painting of 
the great classical age in Greece, and has left us these 
pictures of an earlier millennium. 



II 
MYCEN^ 

The sweltering Argive Plain lies like a tortoise, its 
hind legs to the sea, its head stretching up into the 
mountains of Tenea. High above the eye of the tortoise 
Mycenae lies. Nauplia is set in the right foot. Argos 
in the centre. 

From Nauplia to Mycenae is a short run by train. 
The line follows the coast as far as Argos, passes under 
the headland of Larissa, and then turns north across a 
plain that seems always ten degrees hotter than the rest 
of the country. It lies low, shut in by hills on all sides 



56 DAYS IN ATTICA 

except towards the sea. Mycenae commands the passes 
through the hills behind and keeps watch over plain and 
sea below. Yet one looks in vain for a frowning 
Acropolis dominating the landscape. In spite of its 
2,000 feet of height Mycenae is not a conspicuous land- 
mark. It is set on one of a series of foot-hills which 
are dwarfed by the mountain-range behind. In the dry, 
scattered light of noon, mountains, foot-hills, and citadel 
assume one monotonous tone of broken grey. The 
citadel is placed just as Homer described it "in midmost 
Argos," hidden away among her stony heights. 

The train stops at a little wayside station guarded by a 
single row of eucalyptus trees, from which a narrow 
ribbon of road runs up to the modest inn, that blushes a 
bright pink, and calls itself " The Beautiful Helen." No 
wheeled vehicles are likely to be found at the station, 
but a brown boy in the grey cotton smock of the country 
takes charge of travellers' bags and puts them on the 
inevitable mule. When we last stayed at the Beautiful 
Helen we were impressed with the cleanliness, unusual 
in small Greek inns. Our host told us that he had 
acted foreman to the American excavators at Corinth 
and had learnt there that the type of traveller who would 
come to Mycenae would not grumble at simplicity if 
he could have a clean bed and an omelette for break- 
fast. He proudly showed us the white enamel washing 
apparatus, and a panoply of bedding spread out to air 
on the balcony. The homestead behind the inn gave 
attractive glimpses of "works and days" in a modern 
Argive version. I have a vivid recollection of some 
dozen peasants clothed in loose blue linen, wielding their 
wooden shovels with laughter and merrymaking, while 
the chaff from the threshing-floor made dusty the rose 
of a sultry twilight. This was when we returned to our 
pleasant quarters at the end of a long day among the 
stones on the Acropolis. 



THE THIRSTY ARGIVE PLAIN 57 

From this homestead the road runs uphill, and soon 
the lines of boulders mark the outer lines of the fortress 
and the remains of a prehistoric bridge across a ravine. 
On the left of the road is the entrance to the magnificent 
beehive tomb shown to Pausanias and other travellers as 
the Treasury of Atreus. One can but be grateful that 
the old picturesque, inaccurate names are still allowed to 
linger. Tomb A and Tomb B would convey little to the 
imagination, while the present name suggests the natural 
mistake of the first discoverers who found a sepulchre 
so gorgeous that it seemed to them a king's hidden 
treasure-chamber. Atreus, son of Pelops and father of 
Agamemnon, was just the kind of personage, on the 
borderland of myth and history, who would benefit, so to 
speak, by the touch of reality, by association with visible 
remains, so to Atreus the treasure-house was assigned. 

The wanderings of the two carved shafts that flanked 
the doorway of this tomb illustrate well the kind of 
vicissitudes that have beset the stones of ancient Greece. 
The uppermost part of the right-hand shaft was used 
as the lintel of a mosque in Argos, and to adapt it to 
that purpose a large portion of the outer surface was 
hewn away. The greater part of the left and the upper 
part of the right shaft were removed to Ireland in 1810 
by the then Lord Sligo. They were given to him by 
Velr Pasha, Governor of the Morea, in memory of a 
picnic party at Mycenae, which seems to have ended in 
a little informal excavation. The present Marquis of 
Sligo has presented these pieces of the columns to the 
British Museum, where they now^ stand in a command- 
ing position. A complete restoration of the doorway 
that once contained them has been set up at the end of 
the Archaic Room among the Greek marbles. It gives 
an idea of regal opulence, with which the interior of 
the tomb is in keeping — the burial-place of a great 
king. 



58 DAYS IN ATTICA 

A passage of squared stones led down into the hill-side 
where semi-columns in dark grey stone supported a 
lintel crowned with slabs of red porphyry. The vaulted 
tomb itself is cut out of the earth ; from the outside 
nothing but the entrance to the passage was visible, and 
this was probably filled in with earth after the burial. 
Once inside the columned inner entrance a large room 
is revealed, 50 feet high, and shaped like a beehive. 
Think of its dusky magnificence as it lay hidden through 
the centuries gloriously decorated with gold rosettes and 
paintings ! Through this large hall is a smaller inner 
chamber, the tomb proper, which could be sealed up 
and made doubly secure. The other tombs seen by the 
roadside on the way up to Mycenae are repetitions, more 
or less imperfect, of this famous building. 

A turn in the road and the Lion Gate is before us. 
Solid stone lintels crowned by a massive slab of stone 
on which are carved two lions on either side of a blank 
column. 

Why is the column there ? The answer to that 
question might keep us waiting outside the gate all day. 
To divine the meaning of the column one must turn 
to Sir Arthur Evans' fascinating work on '^Tree and 
Pillar Cult." It is a mistake to suppose that the most 
primitive ideas are the most simple. The connection of 
the god with the tree or pillar — one might almost say his 
evolution from the tree or pillar — is particularly hard to 
define since the thought of primitive man was in itself 
confused. The name " Lion Gate " is to this extent a 
misnomer, since it gives the lions the first importance, 
whereas they are but heraldic supporters to the column 
between them. The column may be said to stand for the 
deity, and links the dwellers in Mycenae with that ancient 
form of religion — the worship of stocks and stones. It is 
something of a mental exertion to forget the later hier- 
archy of Hellenic gods, and to purge our minds of all 



ftlflTIWlMil 



THE THIRSTY ARGIYE PLAIN 59 

superfluous knowledge as we pass under this gate that is 
so old and so simple and so mysterious. 

Inside the gate and close to it is the circle of masonry 
enclosing the royal tombs discovered by Schliemann. 
Here most of the golden treasures were found, the death 
mask of the king, the swords, the cups, the diadems — all 
the wealth that has justified the Homeric epithet of 
"golden Mycenae/' 

The other scattered remains on the hill-top are more 
suggestive taken as a whole than studied individually. 
There are walls of dwelling-houses, and the lines of a 
palace which are best interpreted by the ground-plan of 
Tiryns. It is the situation of the citadel that kindles the 
imagination more than any study of the stones. Except 
on the side of the Lion Gate the ground drops steeply 
from the summit ; on the south-east it is even precipitous. 
Yet the natural strength of the position was not con- 
sidered sufficient protection. Unlike the low-lying, 
unwalled cities of her predecessors in Crete, Mycenae 
has been walled and rewalled at different dates and in 
different styles. Sitting among the low stones of the old 
palace, one looks across " thirsty, horsebearing Argos " to 
the shining shield of sea, seeing in vision the long, open 
boats that once carried the princes of the Peloponnese, 
their gilded bronze, their terrible plumes, their tents, and 
their followers to the plains of windy Troy : " They set up 
their mast and spread the white sail forth, and the wind 
filled the sail's belly and the dark wave sang loud about 
the stern, as the ship made way and sped across the 
wave accomplishing the journey." 

This is the place to read again Achilles' defiance of 
Agamemnon : it shows the spirit in which some of that 
host set out, and also the unsatisfactory nature of that 
indefinite headship which the King of Mycenae was 
able to claim over the other lords of the Peloponnese. 
" Ah me, thou clothed in shamelessness, thou of the 



60 DAYS IN ATTICA 

crafty mind, how shall any Achaian hearken to thy bidding 
with all his heart, be it to go a journey or to fight the foe 
again ? Not by reason of the Trojan spearmen came I 
hither to fight, for they have not wronged me ; never did 
they harry mine oxen nor my horses, nor even waste my 
harvest in deep-soiled Phthia, the nurse of men ; seeing 
there lieth between us long space of shadowy mountains 
and echoing sea : but thee, thou shameless one, we 
followed hither, to make thee glad by earning recom- 
pense at the Trojan's hands for Menelaos and for thee, 
thou dog-face ! " Certainly the King of Mycenae was 
not followed from pure devotion. 

Here on his hill-top palace the tragedy of Agamemnon's 
life was finished. Homer shows the beginning of the 
drama. It is to -^schylus that one turns for the end. 
^schylus himself had probably never visited Mycenae 
since he laid the scene of his play at Argos. He had not 
realized how noble a watch-tower this palace made and 
how many hours there were for Clytemnestra to lay her 
plots. If it were morning when the long boats were 
sighted over sea, it would be evening before Agamemnon's 
triumphal chariot reached the Lion Gate. In the play 
the moments are compressed. The watchers in the tower 
have hardly brought the queen news of his arrival on the 
shore, before the shouts outside proclaim his return to 
the palace. The chariot is slowly drawn within the gates 
and in it stands wide-ruling Agamemnon in his golden 
armour and nodding plumes ; and beside him the captive 
prophetess. Clytemnestra welcomes him, spreading 
carpets at his feet. She leads him to the bathroom. 
These hard stones that now lie baking in the sun she 
covered with soft drapery, and hidden among the drapery 
the noose and net. The final pause, the cry of anguish, 
and then the cry of triumph as the queen shows her 
bloody axe to the sunshine. **Thus and thus I smote 
him." This is the tremendous drama that opens the long 



i^KOiaL. . ^r^^*^t.<Ai- ^^^---i.'i^v 



THE THIRSTY ARGIVE PLAIN 61 

trilogy of the House of Atreus. One cannot visit 
Mycenae and ignore -^schylus any more than one can 
visit Agincourt without Shakespeare. 

There is no need to ask how much is poetry, how 
much is Hterature ? This is the wine of imagination that 
has turned men of business into tomb-hunters and 
archaeologists. 

In the early part of last century there was a young 
student who did not trouble over nice distinctions 
between literature and history. He studied his Homer 
as the Bible was studied before the days of the higher 
criticism. He had the faith that can remove mountains, 
and he lived to show tangible proofs of his belief. This 
boy was Henry Schliemann. His story still reads like 
a fairy-tale. Single-handed he amassed a fortune that 
enabled him to realize his youthful dreams and to carry 
on excavations on the traditional sites of the Homeric 
world. At Troy he showed the walls of successive settle- 
ments reaching back to the Stone Age. At Tiryns and at 
Mycenae he laid bare these palaces and tombs of the 
Argive kings. In the tombs he found treasures of a 
civilization fully as wonderful as that described by Homer. 

It is in the Central Museum at Athens that the treasures 
of Schliemann's Mycenaean Age are stored. The so- 
called " Mycenaean Room " (just opposite the main 
entrance) has been designed to harmonize with its con- 
tents. The walls are decorated with reproductions of 
Mycenaean patterns, correct both in form and colour, and 
on the floor there are the same spiral motives in mosaic. 
In the large glass cases in the centre of the room are set 
out the contents of the royal tombs found by Schliemann 
at Myceuce : the death-mask of some great king, his 
crown and ornaments represented in fine gold leaf. On 
the top of one of these cases stands an alabaster cup with 
three upcurving handles. These grandiloquent curves 
are not suggestive of stone-work. The cup must have 



62 DAYS IN ATTICA 

been manufactured as something of a tour de force, in 
imitation no doubt of some metal original. It is remark- 
able that three out of the original four handles have sur- 
vived. Then there is the golden Nestor cup, so called 
because it recalls Homer's description of the cup that 
Nestor used in the camp before Troy : — 

" A right goodly cup that the old man brought from 
home, embossed with studs of gold, and four handles 
that were to it, and round each two golden doves were 
feeding, and to the cup were two feet below. Another 
man could scarce have lifted the cup from the table when 
it was full, but Nestor the Old raised it easily. In this 
cup the woman like unto the goddesses mixed a mess 
for them, with Pramnian wine, and therein grated cheese 
of goats' milk, with a grater of bronze, and scattered 
white barley thereon and bade them drink, whenas she 
had made ready the mess." 

At the far end of the room, set each on its own pedestal, 
are two small golden cups found in a tomb at Vaphio, 
near Sparta. These may very well have been imported 
from Crete. Here once more is the world of the Cretan 
bull-fight — only on these cups it is not the fight that is 
shown us but the preliminary scenes of capture. A bull- 
hunt is going forward ; with the help of a decoy cow 
naked men are driving the bulls into a trap. The figures 
of the men are attenuated and uninteresting when com- 
pared with the masterly treatment of the animals. The 
craftsman who did not shrink from rendering in beaten 
gold the figure of a tripped bull rolling in a net could 
also handle with delicious satire the innocent expression 
on the face of the cow who is leading her companions to 
their fate. These cups look as if they were made in solid 
metal. In reality there is an inner cup of smooth gold 
over which the embossed outer cup is fitted, leaving a 
hollow space between. The handle is a beautiful little 
bit of constructive goldsmith's work. 



THE THIRSTY ARGIVE PLAIN 63 

Beside the cups is an inlaid dagger showing a lion- 
hunt. The huntsmen are true Cretans with their slim, 
naked bodies and big shields. The Mycenaean, no 
less than the Briton, seems to have known that para- 
doxical sportsman's instinct that loved and drew and 
hunted and slew the wild creatures around him. 

Swords and golden shields are here too, and an 
infinite number of small discs of beaten gold (perhaps 
ornaments on a mummy case recalling the golden 
armour and raiment which the king had worn in life), an 
abundance also of gold rings, bracelets, and diadems. 
Looking into these glittering cases we understand how 
the stories of the ** Age of Gold " lingered on into 
Hesiod's day, and how the poets of Homer's time loved 
to enlarge on the glories of the ^' King of Mycenae rich 
in gold." Read how Agamemnon arrayed himself for 
battle :— 

*'Then the son of Atreus cried aloud and bade the 
Argives arm them, and himself amid them did on the 
flashing bronze. First he fastened fair greaves about his 
legs, fitted with ankle-clasps of silver ; next again he did 
his breast-plate about his breast, the breast-plate that in 
time past Kinyras gave him for a guest-gift. For afar in 
Cyprus did Kinyras hear the mighty rumour how that 
the Achaians were about to sail forth to Troy in their 
ships, wherefore did Kinyras give him the breast-plate, to 
do pleasure to the king. Now therein were ten courses 
of black cyanus, and twelve of gold, and twenty of tin, 
and dark blue snakes writhed up towards the neck, three 
on either side, like rainbows that the son of Kronos has 
set in the clouds, a marvel of the mortal tribes of men. 
And round his shoulders he cast his sword, wherein 
shone studs of gold, but the scabbard about it was silver 
fitted with golden chains. And he took his richly-dight 
shield of his valour that covereth all the body of a man, a 
fair shield, and round about it were ten circles of bronze 



64 DAYS IN ATTICA 

and thereon were twenty white bosses of tin, and one in 
the midst of black cyanus. And thereon was embossed 
the Gorgon fell of aspect, glaring terribly, and about her 
were Dread and Terror. And from the shield was hung 
a baldric of silver, and thereon was curled a snake of 
cyanus ; three heads interlaced had he growing out of 
one neck. And on his head Agamemnon set a two- 
crested helm with fourfold plate and plume of horse- 
hair, and terribly the crest nodded from above. And he 
grasped two strong spears, shod with bronze, and keen, 
and far forth from him into the heaven shone the bronze, 
and thereat Hera and Athena thundered, honouring the 
King of Mycenae rich in gold." 

Reading this description and then looking at the con- 
tents of the royal tombs found by Schliemann at Mycenae 
it is easy to sympathize with the first burst of surprise and 
admiration that made Schliemann himself and the scholars 
of his day ready to believe that these were the very tombs 
of Homer's heroes. It was a thrilling moment when the 
archaeologist asserted that he had found the very features 
of Agamemnon in his death-mask. Soon came the in- 
evitable reaction. The theory did not bear investigation, 
and the 'scientific world drew away to the extreme of 
caution and placed unknown centuries between the tombs 
at Mycenae and the Achaians of whom Homer sang. 
Gladstone was one of the first scholars who reconsidered 
the evidence and showed how the discoveries at Mycenae 
could rightly be used to illustrate Homer. It was sug- 
gested that the poems of Homer might belong to a period 
of fusion between the two races : that they date from a 
time soon after a race of warriors from the North had 
established themselves in the homes of Mycenaean culture. 
These men with weapons of iron and habits of hardihood 
replaced but did not destroy the luxurious, art-loving 
subjects of Mycenae. In spite of the change of race there 
was continuity of tradition. The conquerors respected the 



THE THIRSTY ARGIVE PLAIN 65 

refinements of the old civilization, and prided themselves 
on their treasures of Mycenaean workmanship, such as 
the elaborately ornamented shield of Achilles and Nestor's 
cup. A garment or a vessel " well-v^rought," it was this 
that the northern spirit delighted in, and this that the 
southern craftsman could so well achieve. 

So Schliemann has proved his main point, and has 
shown that these Homeric epics have a basis of fact. 
After all, Homer was a poet dreaming of an age of gold, 
not an archaeologist describing the Bronze or Iron Age. 
Who can be sorry that he did not know the real 
Mycenae well enough to write of heroines in flowered 
bell-skirts, stiff jackets, and high hats, instead of his own 
gentle chiton-clad women in their *' great shining robes, 
light of woof and gracious " ? 

There are some to whom the great Mycenaean Room in 
the museum at Athens must serve instead of a visit to 
Crete or Mycenae. To these I would commend the ex- 
cellent reproductions in the glass case labelled ^^Knossos." 
Here are the faience figurines, the gilded bull, and many 
other of Sir Arthur Evans' most striking finds. Those 
who cannot travel even to Athens will find the same 
reproductions and many original objects from Knossos 
in the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford. Some reproduc- 
tions are also shown in the First Vase Room at the 
British Museum. 



CHAPTER III 
LEGENDS OF THE ACROPOLIS 

IN Greece each district has its own cycle of legend. 
The most barren landscape is peopled with gracious 
forms and the silence filled with echoes of past music. 
Subtle as the fragrance of hidden flowers, elusive as a 
childish memory, these ghosts of bygone faith still haunt 
their old homes to touch us with the intimate note of 
hidden personality. Later, more stirring memories added 
sanctity to the already sacred soil. The spirit of Theseus 
lingered at Marathon, and at the time of the battle he 
was seen to lead the charge against the Persians, while in 
later days it was the ghosts of the victorious legions 
themselves that haunted the spot. 

It is this double background of tradition — legend 
breaking through upon history, and history reaching back 
into legend — that makes travel in Greece so much a 
matter of the individual imagination. That which is to 
one man cause for disappointment may to another bring 
rapturous exaltation. Of Attica this is specially true, 
since outwardly it is less blessed by Nature than other 
parts of Greece. Those who take Attica at its surface 
value find themselves alone with stones and bushes under 
a hot sky. Those who approach her as her own sons, 
piously remembering the footsteps of gods and heroes, 
may still know the joy of being young in the world's 
youth. 

Little Attica ! What a scrap of the earth's surface it is ! 

66 



LEGENDS OF THE ACROPOLIS 67 

From the Bay of Phalerum and the harbour of Piraeus 
there runs inland a ten-mile stretch of country, for the 
most part stony and flat — the plain of the river Cephissus. 
This river itself is often dry in summer, its course marked 
only by a slender line of dark green foliage, where olive 
and oleander have sent their roots to the hidden moisture 
of its bed. In the middle of the plain a limestone ridge 
mounts to the sharp profile of Lycabettus, breaks steeply 
to that queer rock known as the " frog's mouth," and then 
reappears again in the abrupt cliff of the Acropolis. The 
ridge behind Lycabettus is called Turkovoumi, the '* Turks' 
Mountains." One fancies a note of satire in the name. 
As a rule the hills were the home of the Christians. The 
only mountain the Turks could boast of was this absurd 
miniature range. The real hills, the "violet crown" of 
Athens, which were never occupied by the Turks, are 
Hymettus, Pentelicus, Parnes. They enclose the plain 
on its three landward sides. 

Behind each of these mountain masses is another piece 
of Attica not visible from Athens. Between Hymettus 
and the eastward sea lies the Mesogaia Plain. It is larger 
and more fertile than the plain of the Cephissus, and yet 
figures little in history, for no highroad passes through it. 
Attica's back-parlour, should one say ? Behind Pentelicus 
lies the plain of Aphidnae, lying saucer-like with a ring of 
hills around it and a piece of rising ground in its centre. 
The railway to Chalcis skirts the edge of this country, a 
pleasant, wooded region. The great plain behind Parnes 
does not belong to Attica but to Boeotia. Parnes is the 
one landward boundary of the Attic peninsula. Towards 
the west her soaring ridges dip to Mount -^galeus, and 
behind these is the sea-girt Thriasian plain around Eleusis, 
now reckoned as Attic territory. 

This, then, is Attica at its " surface value " : an Acropolis, 
a rocky ridge, an oval plain, a ring of hills, three 
other hidden plains, and a rocky coast. Superficially 



68 DAYS IN ATTICA 

it is not much larger than a good-sized Scotch 
shooting, and in the best sense of the word Athens itself 
is still but a country town. In the heart of the city you 
catch glimpses of the guardian hills. From the Acropolis 
Hymettus seems near at hand, every cleft and gully shining 
distinct, so that it is hard to believe the summit is three 
hours away. At the further, narrower end of the plain, 
Pentelicus shows white scars where the marble has been 
quarried from her side. To the left Parnes, perhaps the 
most beautiful of the three sister mountains, shows the 
cliff of Harma, a sharp nick in her flowing outline. 
This is the landward view from the Acropolis. 

On the other side, looking down from the Acropolis 
towards the sea, the plain seems almost toy-like, ridged with 
rock and dotted with diminutive dwellings. Dark lines of 
factories begin to streak the landscape as it closes to the 
harbour of Piraeus. Then carrying the eye further, across 
the sea and across the crystal gulfs of air, the pointed 
silhouette of ^gina shows wine-dark against the blue. 
The Athenians could call it their eyesore in those old days 
when politics counted for so much more than landscape. 
To-day Athens might change the metaphor and know 
^gina as ^^ the apple of her eye," this expressive point of 
darker colour set in the blue circle of the gulf. Behind 
-^ginaare the airy peaks of the Peloponnese, and faintest 
among these the outline of the Trcezen hills around the 
Argive Plain. These are the hills over which Theseus 
journeyed to Athens, coming, as all heroes should, from 
" over the hills and far away." This is the magic of the 
name Troezen. To us in Athens it stands for the land 
of the bluest distance " across the far horizon's rim," the 
land from which came the prince-adventurer to win a 
crown and make a city. 

The modern traveller who approaches Athens by the 
railway finds himself travelling in the footsteps of 
Theseus, and from the Isthmus onwards the stages of the 




BouTEoF- Theseus 5HEWN 



LEGENDS OF THE ACROPOLIS 69 

journey are marked by the names of the places where he 
met and overcame the monsters in his path. It is at the 
Isthmus of Corinth that the road from Troezen joins the 
railway from Patras. The pine-trees still grow here as in 
the days when Theseus met Sinis '' the pine-bender " and 
treated him to a taste of his own ingenious devilry. Sinis 
waited here for travellers and had invented a method of 
his own for destroying them. Vase paintings show 
Theseus bending down the pine-tree to which he has 
already attached the giant. When the hand of Theseus 
is removed the tree will spring back and Sinis will be torn 
in two or flung into the air. The train stops again at 
Crommyon, where Theseus slew the wild sow Phaea — 
** foul old landed-proprietress," as Pater styles her. Now 
the road narrows to a single path, winding round the side 
of the cliffs above the sea. Here Sciron lay in wait ; it 
was his pleasant custom to hurl wayfarers into the sea, 
till Theseus came and with fine poetic justice flung him 
over the cliff's edge to fatten his own turtle. There truly 
enough in the transparent, green waters below, one may 
still see from the railway a rock shaped like a sea-tortoise, 
its lean head protruding from its rounded back. This 
narrow pass above the sea has in all times suggested itself 
as an excellent place for highway robbery, and the task of 
Theseus had to be repeated every few decades until the 
railway did its civilizing work. 

Eleusis, the next point of the journey, recalls another 
cycle of legend, and that perhaps the most beautiful of all 
Greek mythology, but for the moment we must forget the 
weary woman sitting by the wayside at the virgin's well, 
"where the people of Eleusis come to draw water under 
the shadow of an olive-tree." In the story of Theseus 
Eleusis is the scene of the great wrestling match where 
he met and threw Kerkyon, king of this district. Hitherto 
his combats had been with monsters outside the pale of 
society. Now for the first time he is pitted against the 



70 DAYS IN ATTICA 

forces of a rival state. Kerkyon was a king, and though 
in the Theseus myth he figures as an oppressor, in the 
Eleusinian legend he bears a different character. His 
chief crime seems to have been that his state blocked the 
landward road to Athens. Theseus wrestled with and 
overthrew him. 

At Eleusis the railway leaves the path of Theseus and 
bears to the east in order to enter the Cephissian Plain by 
the pass between Mount /Egaleus and Parnes. Theseus 
bore right on by the Sacred Way, now the main road 
from Eleusis to Athens, which crosses the hill-barrier of 
Corydallus. This pass is marked by the monastery of 
Daphni, and at the little inn here the peasants still pause 
for their noonday halt under the shade of the wooded 
hill-side. Here Procrustes, first of all Greek innkeepers, 
waited to offer his hospitality to strangers. With that 
na'ive disregard of facts that still characterizes the profes- 
sion, he insisted that the traveller should adapt himself to 
the accommodation offered, rather than adapt the accom- 
modation to the traveller. To this end he stretched on a 
rack the limbs of those that were too short for his bed or 
lopped off the extremities of those that were too large. 
Theseus being fashioned in heroic mould exactly fitted 
the Procrustean bed and afterwards dealt with his host as 
he deserved. Then on, down the long slope of road to 
Athens. Here he made himself known to his father 
^geus, brought the turbulent nobles into subjection, and 
so ends happily this cycle of his travels. In the latter 
part of the Theseus legend the world is no longer bounded 
by the Athenian horizon. Wider issues are involved. 
The story of Theseus in Crete, which has been told in a 
previous chapter, shows Athens emerging from a subordi- 
nate position in the great Minoan Empire. 

Once established in Athens, Theseus seems to change 
from a hero of romance into a human king with very 
human failings. Without going so far as Grote, who 



LEGENDS OF THE ACROPOLIS 71 

holds that the possession of kingly power at once con- 
verted the ''athletic and amorous knight-errant" into a 
"profound and long-sighted politician," one admits that 
Theseus now moves in a different atmosphere. A 
governor grappling with quite real political problems is 
a less romantic figure than a hero slaying a monster, but 
let us take Theseus seriously and see a unity of purpose 
even in his knight-errantry. Is not Theseus in his aspect of 
road-maker, giant-killer, and traveller's friend, the cham- 
pion of unity no less than Theseus the king converting the 
inhabitants of Attica into citizens of Athens ? And even 
in his kingly days adventures in plenty remained to him. 
Plutarch tells us how the Amazons invaded Attica — '' an 
undertaking neither trifling nor feminine." Whom or 
what this invasion exactly indicates the pious traveller 
does not inquire. There seems, however, to have been a 
time when the very existence of the State was in danger. 
The invaders must have pressed Athens hard, for the 
spots dedicated to the memory of Theseus' victory over 
the Amazons are close to the Acropolis itself. A fine 
picture this of the women warriors galloping down the 
Cephissian Plain and closing in on the rock citadel of the 
maiden goddess, herself also a rare lover of fight. 

A later development of the Theseus legend deals with 
his philanderings with Helen at Aphidnae and his rescue 
of Persephone from the underworld. Indeed, according 
to tradition, it was his continued absence on heroic enter- 
prise that lost him his kingdom, for while he was away 
from Athens Castor and Pollux, the brothers of Helen, 
brought an army into Attica and ravaged the country to 
avenge the rape of their sister. (This is of course 
another version of the Homeric story in which Helen is 
carried off by Paris.) The Athenians were now suffering 
for the sins of their king. Menestheus, a descendant of 
the royal line of Erechtheus, took this opportunity of 
stirring up rebellion, and when Theseus returned he found 



72 DAYS IN ATTICA 

it impossible to recover the government. Theseus was 
exiled and never returned to Athens in his lifetime, 
though his bones were afterwards brought home and 
buried in the shrine that bore his name. 

However the Theseus myth is to be viewed, whether 
as Pater saw it, " the type of progress triumphant through 
injustice, set on improving things off the face of the 
earth," or as the type of social order developing, organizing, 
and unifying heterogeneous elements into a single state : 
whether you curse him as a Radical or bless him as a 
reformer, whether you look upon him as a man, a 
dynasty, a type, or a purely mythological invention, is 
all beside the mark here. What we want to know 
is what he meant to the Athenians who first told his 
story. To them Theseus stood for the making of Attica, 
the ingathering of the gods on the Acropolis, and the 
establishment of Athena's supremacy : — 

*^ When Theseus came to the throne, he, being a power- 
ful as well as a wise ruler, among other improvements in 
the administration of the country, dissolved the councils 
and separate governments and united all the inhabitants 
of Attica in the present city, establishing one council and 
one town hall. They continued to live on their own 
lands, but he compelled them to resort to Athens as their 
metropolis, and henceforward they were all inscribed in 
the roll of her citizens. A great city thus arose, which 
was handed down by Theseus to his descendants, and 
from his day to this the Athenians have regularly cele- 
brated the national festival of the Synoecia, or * union of 
the communes,' in honour of the goddess Athena." 

What a picture Thucydides here gives of the peasantry 
gathered into Athens to vote, to pay taxes, and to wor- 
ship ! Their daily life goes on as usual on their remote 
farms, but they have been made to feel themselves mem- 
bers of a greater community. Their eyes are no longer 
turned to their little village shrine where the sacred fire 



LEGENDS OF THE ACROPOLIS 73 

burned before a local goddess, but to the Prytaneum, the 
public hearth of Athens. Here was the outward sign of 
internal unity. 

The removal of the hearth meant the removal of the 
hearth-deities. It meant the extinction of local patriotism 
and petty jealousies. The Acropolis rock became the 
heart of Attica. The magnificent temples built upon it 
later could not add to its sanctity, however much they 
added to its glory. The sites were sacred before the 
shrines came there. Even when Theseus came the Acro- 
polis was so crowded with myths and memories that the 
divinities from the country (with one exception) had to 
be accommodated in precincts outside the Acropolis 
walls. 

In our school-days Theseus seemed to come at the 
beginning of the Athenian legend, but when we stand on 
the Acropolis he seems more truly at the beginning of 
Athenian history, and behind him crowd a score of 
shadowy nightmare forms, half deity, half demon. The 
rock is theirs, not his. It is worth while to recall these 
old legends in their early crudity, since it was to com- 
memorate them that the temples were built. 

Strange and uncouth as the legends were in their 
beginning, Pheidias and his followers redeemed them 
from savagery and shaped them into beauty. The 
Parthenon frieze shows gods and mortals moving calmly 
through an ordered world ; in the pediments a cosmic 
crisis is suggested but it never compromises the dignity 
of the actors. Looking at them it is hard to realize 
how much has been tacitly omitted. Giants and 
monsters have been humanized ; mysterious old goddesses 
are given youth and beauty ; ugly incidents are forgotten. 
But for all this the nightmare legends were first in 
possession, and any study of the Acropolis would be 
incomplete without them. 

The starting-point of Athenian mythology, that which 



74 DAYS IN ATTICA 

the Germans would call the ^'foundation legend/' sets 
forth a rivalry between the goddess Athena and the god 
Poseidon. On the surface it records the jealousies of 
two gods, competing for the greatest of Greek cities. 
But the strife has a deeper significance in the 
making of Attica. The worship of the new divinity 
(Athena) triumphs over that of the old sea-god (Poseidon). 
The olive, emblematic of the ordered life of the husband- 
man and citizen is preferred to the salt spring, emblematic 
of the wandering life of the seafarer. I wonder if the 
Athenians ever reflected how Poseidon had his revenge 
in the later days of their expansion when the wealth of 
the city was squandered over fleets that never returned to 
her shores ? There are many versions of the legend. 
Apollodorus gives in brief the shape into which it finally 
crystallized : — 

** The gods were minded to choose for themselves 
cities where they should be specially worshipped. Posei- 
don was the first to reach Attica, where he smote with 
his trident and made a sea spring up in the midst of the 
Acropolis, where it remains to this day and is called the 
Sea of Erechtheus.^ Athena followed, and calling Cecrops 
to be witness that she took the land in possession planted 
the olive which still grows in the temple of Pandrosus. 
Then a strife arose concerning the country ; so Zeus, to 
reconcile the rivals, appointed judges, who were not 
Cecrops and Cranaus as some say, nor yet Erechtheus, 
but the twelve deities (the Olympian gods). Their de- 
cision adjudged the land to Athena upon the witness of 
Cecrops, and so Athens gained its name, being called 
after the goddess." 

There is another version of the same legend, not with- 
out its bearing on modern politics. The story is told by 
Augustine on the authority of the learned Varro : — 

" In the days of King Cecrops the women of Attica took 

* It may still be seen by the north porch of the Erechtheum (p. 137), 



LEGENDS OF THE ACROPOLIS 75 

full part in political affairs. When Poseidon and Athena 
disputed the spiritual patronage of Athens, King Cecrops 
after consulting an oracle took a referendum vote of the 
adult inhabitants. The vote was given on grounds of 
sex, the men voting for sea-power, the women for the 
goddess of wisdom and needlework. Then, as now, 
the women had the numerical majority and carried the 
business in hand. But the men had superior strength 
and punished the siiffragatrices by the loss of the vote 
and otherwise." 

This dramatic opening introduces at once almost all 
the principal actors who figure in the legends of the 
Acropolis : the divinities Athena, Poseidon, Zeus, and the 
heroes Erechtheus, Cecrops, Cranaus, Pandrosus. 

To take Athena first, since it was she who henceforth 
reigned on the hill-top. How shall we figure her to our- 
selves — this grey-eyed deity of Athens, whose worship 
became the inspiration of all notable achievements ? The 
simplest and truest thought of her is perhaps to be found 
in Homer's line : ^^ The semblance of a woman fair and 
tall, and skilled in splendid handiwork." Later she 
assumed many different aspects. On the Acropolis she 
is figured as Athena of the City; Athena, Giver of Victory; 
Athena, Giver of Health ; Athena the Champion, and 
Athena the Maid. Yet primarily she stands as the 
goddess of good handiwork, rejoicing in all things well 
and temperately wrought. Here on the Acropolis it was 
the achievement of the politician that was dedicated to 
her. In their temple in the market-place below, she and 
her brother Hephaestus accepted in the same spirit the 
work of the craftsman. How did the Athenian visualize 
her ? It is difficult to say. The great statue in gold and 
ivory made by Pheidias for the Parthenon ^ is known 
only from small and incomplete reproductions, but even 
allowing for this it seems hardly intimate enough to suit 

^ See p. 127. 



76 DAYS IN ATTICA 

the character in which the legends show her. Its vague 
impersonal majesty is more a patriot's image of his city 
than an artist's conception of womanhood. The so-called 
** Lemnian " Athena gives perhaps the most winning 
representation. Here she is as Odysseus knew her in her 
companionable aspect — active, almost boyish in figure, 
with a capacity for mirth in the demure lips, which 
recalls that delicious burst of laughter in Ithaca when 
she found Odysseus seeking to deceive even her — his 
monitress. It has been said that this statue, perhaps 
made for the island of Lemnos, was in antiquity the 
most popular representation of the goddess. Fitting this 
to Homer's Hne we shall gain an idea of what Athena 
may have been to the Athenian people in those earlier days 
before her personality was merged in the greatness of the 
state she typified. 

Poseidon, whose real element is the water, remains on 
the Acropolis hill as something of an interloper. It is 
true that his salt spring moans with a sound of the sea ; 
true that the holes of his trident still left on the face 
of the rock have been cherished by orthodox Athenians 
as Mohammed's footmark in Jerusalem is cherished by 
the faithful Mussulman. Still his place is but a secondary 
one. His worship is confined to a single altar in a 
temple dedicated to various deities. The defeated rival 
would have gained more dignity by withdrawing himself 
altogether from the hill-top. The ocean was still his. 
He was the maker of storms and earthquakes, and terrible 
enough to the Athenians both on sea and land. 

Zeus also has his shrine on the Acropolis. From 
earliest times a precinct which now lies north-east of 
the Parthenon seems to have been sacred to him. His 
altar here was on the open face of the rock and was 
not covered by a temple. Here once a year was per- 
formed that strange archaic rite in which a bull was 
slaughtered, and in the trial that followed the blood- 



PLATE IV 




HEAD OF THE LEMNIAN ATHENA P.V PHEIDIAS 

IN THi; BOI.OGNA .MUSEUM 



LEGENDS OF THE ACROPOLIS 77 

guiltiness was finally brought home to the axe, which 
was condemned and executed. Throughout Greece 
Zeus is of course supreme ; yet it sometimes seems as 
though his very supremacy deprived him of the more 
intimate personal worship given to the other gods. The 
local deities gained their popularity from the fact that 
they were connected with one beloved spot — the home 
of the worshipper. Thus Athena at Athens, Apollo at 
Amyclae, Hera at Argos, were adored with a jealous 
passion that was more than half patriotism. Zeus was, 
as a matter of course, supreme everywhere, and therefore 
had no one special locality for his own intimate 
possession. At Athens he was altogether eclipsed by 
his daughter Athena. He had a temple in the Piraeus, 
where the sailor on return gave thanks for a safe voyage : 
a shrine on the Acropolis, and altars on some neigh- 
bouring mountain-tops — altogether a meagre allowance 
compared with the fact that on the Acropolis alone 
Athena seems to have had at one time no less than 
three temples. It is true that outside the town there stood 
from the time of Peisistratus onwards the unfinished 
columns of a temple to Olympian Zeus, and the fact 
is perhaps not without its significance that the temple 
to " the god of all the Greeks " remained imperfect 
through the centuries of independence, while the Greek 
states were in rivalry with each other, to be finished 
only when a foreign ruler had taught them the identity 
of their interests as a nation. 

So much for the gods who appear in the legend of 
ApoUodorus. The other characters mentioned belong 
to that dim race, half human, half divine, whom the 
Athenians regarded as their progenitors. Various scraps 
of genealogy have come down to us in which the name 
of Cecrops, Cranaus, Erechtheus, figure in different 
relationships, but these mostly bear the mark of later 
mythological invention. What shadowy personages or 



78 DAYS IN ATTICA 

dynasties lie at the back of these traditions who shall 
say ? The Athenians boasted that they were autoch- 
thonous, sprung from the earth : earth was their 
mother ; Cecrops, born from the earth, their father. 
The sanctity attaching to the grave of Cecrops on the 
Acropolis was therefore a serious matter, and one which, 
as we shall see in a succeeding chapter, even the en- 
lightened fifth-century Athenian could not suffer any man 
to trifle with. As if to typify the antiquity of these early 
kings and their close relationship with earth, the vase 
paintings show them at times with curling serpents' tails. 
It is Erechtheus who seems the most nearly human, 
and he is brought down almost within the vision of 
history by the fact that, under the first temple on the 
Acropolis, remains have been traced of the old palace 
of Erechtheus. Here Homer tells us that Athena dwelt. 
One of the early legends shows her as the foster-mother 
of the infant Erichthonius, whom Ge, the earth-mother, 
had committed to her charge. Athena gave a closed basket 
containing the babe into the keeping of the three daughters 
of Cecrops, with strict injunctions that they should on 
no account look within. She then flew off to 
Pentelicus and was returning, bearing with her an 
immense crag with which to buttress up her new abode, 
when, in mid-air, she met the sacred crow who told 
her that the daughters of Cecrops had disobeyed her 
orders. They had opened the casket committed to their 
charge and there beheld the unbeholdable. In horror 
at the news Athena dropped her crag, which may still 
be seen lying out awkwardly in the centre of the plain. 
(Thus the Athenian mind accounted for the somewhat 
astonishing appearance of Lycabettus.) The legend 
ends with the faithless sisters being driven from the 
Acropolis ; in some versions they throw themselves over 
the cliff, while Pandrosos, the one sister who had not 
been guilty of the crime, has a precinct set apart for 



LEGENDS OF THE ACROPOLIS 79 

her on the Acropolis, adjoining the tomb of her father, 
Cecrops. 

These are the old tales, bizarre rather than beautiful. 
Their crudity seems contrary to the Hellenic spirit until 
the rationalizing instinct of the classical Greek mind is 
seen at work. Scraps of primitive legend, survivals of 
strange ritual, and a series of unmeaning names have to 
be fitted together so that the Greek may conceive of his 
past as an orderly whole, not as we see it — a turmoil of 
light and darkness, with earth-worship, devil-worship, 
and fertility-charms gradually giving way to higher forms 
of religion. Such a conception as this was impossible at 
that day, and since the Greek was both too logical and 
too sceptical to accept things just as he found them, he 
made a patchwork mythology, working the old pieces 
into the pattern and adding, where chronology seemed to 
demand it, goodly strings of invented names. 

Athena, Poseidon, Zeus, Cecrops, Erechtheus, 
Pandrosos, not to speak of Butes the father-priest, 
and Ge the earth-mother herself ; these seem to have 
been already established on the Acropolis before the 
days of Theseus. There is no record of their coming, 
for they were always there. They are, as it were, the 
earliest stratum of divinities. Where then should be found 
room for the newcomers (whom Theseus brought to 
Athens) from Eleusis and Eleutherae, from Acharnae and 
Brauron ? Only one of these ^^ outsiders " was allowed 
to find a place on the summit of the Acropolis : the 
Brauronian Artemis, a goddess sufficiently mysterious 
and uncouth to associate on equal terms with the most 
autochthonous and serpentine of the ^' old nobility." 

The Artemis from Brauron has her precinct on the 
south side of the Acropolis between the Propylaea and 
Parthenon. Perhaps the site was already dedicated to 
some early worship of the huntress Artemis, dating from 
days when gods of the chase were the first to be 



80 DAYS IN ATTICA 

propitiated. The goddess of Brauron was an old wooden 
image, little more than a log. The legend of the 
Brauronian cult was later woven by Euripides into his 
play " Iphigenia in Tauris." According to this version 
Iphigenia was not really slain by her father in expiation 
of his vow, but was miraculously rapt away from the 
altar of sacrifice by Artemis, the protectress of all young 
maidens. She was carried to Tauris in the Crimea, 
where she became a priestess and tended an old wooden 
image of the goddess. Here her brother Orestes found 
her ; at her instigation he avenged their father's murder ; 
afterwards they fled together to Brauron in Attica, taking 
with them the image, henceforward known as Brauronian 
Artemis. The after-fate of this statue was a favourite 
subject of discussion with the ancients. It is clear, how- 
ever, that the Athenians laid no claim to it. There were 
two statues in the sanctuary of Brauronian Artemis on 
the Acropolis, one considerably older than the other, but 
neither claiming to be the original image from the 
Crimea, though the shrine on the Acropolis was an 
important centre of the Brauronian cult. The protector 
of Iphigenia remains always a woman's goddess, a special 
protector of maidens and of women in childbirth. 
Between the ages of five and ten the Athenian maidens 
accompanied by their parents and led by a priestess were 
brought to her shrine to perform some obscure ceremony 
of initiation or propitiation. They must " dance as 
bears" before the goddess. At first it would seem that 
they were clad in actual bearskins, but afterwards this 
came to be replaced by the " saffron robe " of which the 
women sing in the ^' Lysistrata " of Aristophanes. The 
garments worn at this festival were hung as offerings 
upon the image. Other relics of girlhood were also left 
here ; a doll, a mirror, a shawl, and on the eve of 
marriage the bride must bring her girdle as an offering 
to Artemis. 



LEGENDS OF THE ACROPOLIS 81 

So, still, in Southern Europe the bride brings her 
orange-wreath and veil to hang before the image of the 
Virgin ; and so, still, in Japan the little girls bring, not 
their toys but their first handiwork to their goddess of 
mercy who combines the tenderness of Artemis for all 
young things with Athena's love of good work. 

The village of Brauron, from which the cult of Artemis 
came, lies near the one little port of the great Mesogaia 
Plain behind Hymettus. Each of the three hidden plains 
of Attica supplied Athens with a new divinity, and one 
came over the sea from Thrace. 

From Aphidnae, the plain behind Pentelicus, came the 
two brothers, the Anakes or Dioscuri. Their true Greek 
home was at Sparta, but the great Twin Brethren could 
always truly say — 

By many names men call us, 
In many lands we dwell. 

Their presence at Aphidnae had to be accounted for 
by the supposition that they were there to look after their 
truant sister the fair Helen (see p. 71). In Athens their 
worship took no root and soon disappeared. 

It was far otherwise with the two other great divinities 
who are said to have come to Athens at the time of the 
Union of Attica : Demeter, who came from Eleusis, and 
Dionysus, originally a Thracian god who came to Athens 
from Eleutherae, a small plain lying behind Parnes. 
Geographically Eleutherae would seem to belong to 
Bceotia rather than to Attica, but its inhabitants "liked 
the Athenian form of government," says Pausanias, and 
attached themselves to Athens, bringing with them the 
ancient image of their god. 

The worships of Demeter and Dionysus seem to have 
been inherently suited to the Athenian temperament. 
Once introduced they eclipsed the influence of the older 



82 DAYS IN ATTICA 

gods. The stories that grew around these two mysterious 
cults are far removed from the strange old tales of 
Cecrops, Erechtheus, and the rest. Superstition rises to 
reverence and dogma changes to poetry. 

Yet in a certain sense their worship has the same basis 
as the religions of the most primitive type. Demeter 
typifies the fruitful powers of Nature. Dionysus stands 
for humanity's enjoyment of her gifts. These two never 
won a place on the summit of the Acropolis, yet in 
course of time their cults came to fill a more prominent 
place in the life of the individual citizen than those of the 
older deities. As Zeus and Athena became more and 
more the great civic gods, the intimacy of their earlier 
relations with their worshippers was forgotten. In Attica 
the teaching of the new gods made an appeal to the 
individual conscience and to those elements of fervour 
and of mysticism to which the older Greek religion had 
paid small heed. 

Though Dionysus was brought to Athens from 
Eleutherae, he was in reality a god from further north, 
wafted across the sea from Thrace. He is the god of all 
benign influences, of the goodly juice of the grape, of the 
warm south wind, kindly animal affections and the joys 
of dance and song. As his sacred boat was carried over 
the waters the sap rose and the masts burst into leaf and 
fruitage under the spell of his warm breath. 

His mother, Semele, a mortal, had perished from the 
vision of her divine lover in his full glory. Dionysus, 
prematurely born in that moment of ecstasy, was after- 
wards sheltered in the thigh of his father, Zeus, until the 
moment of his rebirth. Hence he is the god of all rap- 
ture and exaltation, in one aspect human and approach- 
able, yet in another aspect full of awful godhead. The 
legend as Euripides presents it in ^' The Bacchag " shows 
him in the later guise. The god comes to Thebes, the 
home of his mother, Semele. The king, Pentheus, his 



LEGENDS OF THE ACROPOLIS 83 

own near relation, rejects him with scorn. Dionysus 
reveals and vindicates himself, and Pentheus is torn in 
pieces by the frenzy of the Bacchae. The horror of the 
tragedy is raised to a point that poetry alone dare touch 
by the fact that it is the king's own mother who leads the 
rout. The god has blinded her eyes and in her fervour 
against the unbeliever she slays her son without recog- 
nizing him. 

Dionysus soon came to have a number of small 
shrines in Athens. The exact position of ^^ Dionysus 
in the marshes," " Dionysus in the market-place," and 
the relations of these to the celebrated '' Place of the 
winepress," where yearly his mysteries were celebrated, 
are problems that still tease topographers. One of his 
small shrines can be seen in the maze of excavations 
to the west of the Acropolis. It is marked by a small 
winepress, and over it was found the club-house built by 
a Dionysiac Society of Roman times. His greatest monu- 
ment is the noble theatre on the south of the Acropolis, 
where two of his temples also stand (see p. 151). 

With Demeter the case was different. Her temple at 
Eleusis was so near that the pilgrimage thither became 
an event of ever greater importance. In contrast with 
the number of shrines with which Dionysus was 
honoured Demeter seems to have had only two temples 
in Athens. One, known as the Eleusinion, was some- 
where below the Acropolis rock, perhaps in the neigh- 
bourhood of the Areopagus. Another stood near the 
Sacred Gate. It was probably from here that the 
procession started at the time of the Eleusinian festival. 
On the ^'mystic banks of the IHssus," outside Athens, 
was a precinct dedicated to her where in " the flowering 
month," the end of February and the beginning of 
March, *Uhe lesser mysteries " were celebrated. 

These were a kind of preparation for the greater 
mysteries at Eleusis, and none but those who had been 



84 DAYS IN ATTICA 

initiated at the spring festival were allowed to share 
in the solemnities of the September gathering (see 
p. 317). In these mysteries Dionysus shared hardly less 
than Demeter, and it was his image that was carried in 
solemn procession along the Sacred Way to Eleusis at 
the later festival. 

Like Dionysus, Demeter is ostensibly a kindly deity, 
the patroness of the fruitful earth and the sweet reward 
of the husbandman's toil ; and, like Dionysus, she has 
also a relentless aspect. This is shown in the legend of 
her mourning for Persephone. The world is held 
famine-stricken in the frozen hand of grief, while she 
walks up and down the land searching for her vanished 
daughter. At last she comes to Hecate, the mistress of 
dark lore, who had heard the cry of Persephone when 
Plutus and his dark horses approached her as she was 
gathering flowers in a spring meadow, and carried her off 
to the underworld. Demeter's wrath and grief are unap- 
peasable ; she refuses to allow the plants to bear fruit, 
and the whole race of men seem about to die of famine, 
when the Olympians intervene and Plutus is obliged to 
yield Persephone. The meeting between mother and 
daughter is one of the sweetest themes of poetry. But 
the face of the daughter has changed and Demeter reads 
the truth in her eyes. Persephone has eaten the pome- 
granate, mysterious fruit of the underworld, and Plutus 
holds her as part of his kingdom. To him, therefore, 
she returns once a year, while Demeter mourns for her 
and the trees shed their leaves. At the close of the 
winter months Persephone returns to the upper world, 
and ^^ blossom by blossom the spring begins." 

These, and such as these, are the legends which the 
Athenians told to their children, as they were climbing 
the steep ascent to the Propylaea ; as they were watching 
the chorus on the dancing-ground of Dionysus, or as 
they trod the Sacred Way to Eleusis ; a world of 



LEGENDS OF THE ACROPOLIS 85 

memories, half believed in, wholly loved, to which 
Athenians looked back with wistful longing through the 
hardships of the Peloponnesian War, through the dis- 
appointments of the Sicilian expedition, and the gradual 
loss of political supremacy and military prestige. 



CHAPTER IV 
PROMISE 



Athens Before the Persian Wars 

ON the summit of the AcropoHs, between the 
Parthenon and the Erechtheum, there are low 
rock walls much blurred by time, but still giving 
recognizable indication of a long, rectangular building. 
In modern plans of the Acropolis this is clearly marked 
and is sometimes described as the Hekatompedon or Hun- 
dred-Foot Temple. There seems little doubt that these 
inconspicuous remains mark the earliest temple to 
Athena on the Acropolis. On the same spot still earlier 
masonry has been found — two stone column bases and 
fragments of prehistoric walling. Slight enough in them- 
selves, these remains seem to indicate that beneath the 
temple there was once a living-house with a central hall 
resembling «those at Tiryns and Mycenae. It is exciting 
enough to be told that here is the original house of 
Erechtheus, a palace of sufficient antiquity for the 
Athenians to believe that Athena herself lived here. 
At any rate the site was dedicated to her from earliest 
times so it was natural that this spot should be chosen for 
her first temple. 

86 



PROMISE 87 

I had often tried to picture to myself what the AcropoHs 
hill-top was like in those early days before the first 
Persian invasion, and it was in the Acropolis Museum 
that I came across the bit of sculpture that gave the 
thought an outline — a relief much broken but still show- 
ing temple, sacred precinct, olive-tree, and priestess. 
This missing link came to bridge the gulf between our 
first vision of the bare Acropolis rock, covered only with 
rude shrines, huddled dwellings, and the remains of 
Cyclopean walls, and our later knowledge of the enlarged 
summit in all the glory of its marble temples. 

The little temple in the relief is a box-like building. 
It is in the first primitive stone style recalling the 
old wooden construction. The triglyphs still look like 
beams and the pediment suggests a wooden gable. The 
roof is covered with tiles. 

It helps to call up a picture of the Acropolis in the 
early days of the sixth century, giving life to the 
precise information collected by archaeologists and his- 
torians, such as Dorpfeld and Judeich. Their researches 
have put the facts before us, but some imagination is 
necessary to shape the facts into a picture. Let us make 
the attempt. First there was the long, narrow crag, and, 
dark against the sky, the ragged outlines of the old 
Cyclopean walls. At the western end, line behind line of 
masonry, was the famous nine-gated entrance (Enneapylon), 
a formidable approach to the fortress. For the Acro- 
polis was a fortress ; an impregnable stronghold of 
Church and State set in the midst of the town. The 
dwelling-houses, the tombs, even the palace of the early 
inhabitants had disappeared. The hill-top had lost its 
first residential character. The dwellings of the citizens 
were elsewhere. Such buildings as there were were 
for defence or for worship. 

On the centre of the ridge was a solid - looking 
temple covered with stucco very fine and while, and 



88 DAYS IN ATTICA 

ornamented with deep touches of colour — dark blues 
and greens and a reddish brown. At the east end four 
detached columns and two pilasters supported the archi- 
trave, above which was the well-known frieze of alternate 
triglyph and metope supporting a triangular pediment 
filled with sculpture. The figures in the design show 
monstrous forms ; one rears erect three human heads, 
blue-bearded, and of uncouth amiability. The narrow 
ends of the pediment were filled with their curling tails. 
The whole work is painted with gay colours over the 
rough stone. It is hard to believe that this plain 
and solid building is the forerunner of the great marble 
Parthenon, yet this was the first temple of Athena. 
Here was kept her old wooden image to which every 
four years the city in procession brought the gar- 
ment woven by the flower of its maidenhood, the same 
procession that was recorded on the frieze of the later 
Parthenon. The old temple measured one hundred Attic 
feet from east to west, and in the main room of the 
Parthenon the same length measurement was carefully 
preserved. The temple was double, with a chamber east 
and west, and the Parthenon also preserved the same 
character. The simplicity and honesty of this early Doric 
architecture was full of promise. In less than a century 
it blossomed into full grace and dignity. The proportions 
were enlarged and corrected, so that what was here mere 
heaviness developed into easy strength. Marble took the 
place of limestone, and in more beautiful material the 
sculptured ornament became a triumph of art. Even 
before the discovery of the marble in Pentelicus there 
had been steady prpgress. Peisistratus made the first step 
towards improvement by changing the old pediment 
sculptures for newer ones, and he also added a limestone 
colonnade which lightened the squat appearance of the 
temple. We look indulgently at any reconstruction of old 
Hekatompedon, because it shows the ''man's thought 



PROMISE 89 

dark in the infant's brain " and has hints of beauty to be. 
Yet to those who built it this temple was in itself a thing 
of beauty, a triumph of architecture, a notable advance 
on all that had gone before. The flavour of sanctity gave 
it mysterious awe, since it stood on the site of that first 
Mycenaean house where Athena dwelt with Erechtheus. 
When the temple was built the position was somewhat 
reversed, and instead of Athena being the guest of 
Erechtheus, it was Erechtheus who seemed to be the 
guest of Athena. But the old serpent-king of the Acropolis 
was not forgotten. There were sacred serpents dwelling 
in the precinct, and the curling tails of the sculptured 
pediments seem more connected with his worship than 
with that of Athena. Outside the temple there may still 
be seen a stone altar of Ge, the earth-mother, who confided 
the child Erichthoneus to the care of Athena. 

To complete the picture, to the north of the temple 
there must be imagined a level piece of the hill fenced in 
around a gnarled old olive-tree whose roots twisted 
serpent-like into the ground ; near by was a bare rock 
showing three holes in an irregular row about one foot 
apart ; a rocky pool beside it was filled with stagnant, 
black water. These were the three mysterious emblems 
that gave sanctity to the Acropolis : the olive of Athena, 
the trident-mark of Poseidon, and the salt spring that 
moans in sympathy with the storm-tossed sea (see p. 137). 
Beside the temple and sacred precinct there were at 
this date few other buildings on the Acropolis ; some 
smaller temples, perhaps ; a shrine to Artemis ; an altar 
to the earth-mother ; some archaic statues, and a few 
capitals bearing votive offerings. The, top of the hill 
slopes so much that there was indeed little place for 
other buildings. I fancy that at this time it was not 
all barren rock. We hear later of a flower that grew 
freely here, the flower with which Athena, Giver of 
Health, healed the workman who fell from the Propylaea, 



90 DAYS IN ATTICA 

and may there not have been other olives as well as that 
hoary, old tree of Athena ? After all, it is but a picture 
of fancy that we are painting. Let us think of the old 
Hekatompedon standing against a background of green, 
with the bare rock showing in places through the carpet 
of grass and flowers, a rocky footpath leading from one 
shrine to another, and in front of each an open space 
where the white-robed priest offered sacrifice. 

A deep gully divides the Acropolis from the rocky 
heights to the west. This was excavated by Dr. Dorpfeld, 
who laid bare the crowding houses and narrow ways of 
the sixth-century town. The streets are crooked and 
the houses small. There was no town-planning here, 
no master-mind to direct the growth of the settlement 
whose inhabitants clustered round the Acropolis like bees 
around their hive, ready at any moment to seek refuge in 
their fortress. At first the early settlers seem hardly to 
have dared to quit the Rock. When it was no longer 
possible for them to live within the Acropolis walls they 
cut the foundations of their homes back into the very 
wall of the cliff and remained perched on its barren 
ledges. 

A road wound down from the Areopagus into the 
valley below. The ancient city is here lost beneath the 
modern houses, but its lines are fairly known. A paved, 
open space marked the market-place, widening to a circle 
known as the orchestra or dancing-ground. Beyond this 
the space was prolonged and ran irregularly northwards 
towards a substantial group of houses at the farther end 
of the city. This is the Ceramicus, or potters' quarter. 
It was the fine white clay of this district that lured 
the Athenian potters at an early date from their incon- 
venient homes at the foot of the Acropolis, and here 
(since one trade follows another) the commercial centre 
of the city grew up. The straggling market-place that 
connects the potters' quarter with the buildings at the 



PROMISE 91 

foot of the hill gradually acquired a double character. 
At the potters' end it was the market of commerce. At 
the other end, beneath the Areopagus, political news and 
gossip of State affairs were the commodities exchanged. 
Throughout this century the potters' business became 
increasingly important. The vases from Attica, with 
their glossy black figures and ruddy ground, found a 
market in Sicily, in Italy, in Asia Minor, and throughout 
the islands of the Mediterranean. 

Sixth-century Athens must have been a grey little town, 
with narrow streets and roofs of warm tiles. It lay beneath 
the Acropolis and stretched away unevenly to the north. 
The finest buildings were those near the hill. Here was 
a grey circular building known as the Tholos, where the 
daily sacrifices were offered. Beside it was the Prytaneum, 
with a thin wisp of smoke curling from it in token that 
the sacred fire still burnt in this the great public hearth of 
Athens. Here the officials lived and had their public 
meals. We may imagine it perhaps shaped like a dwell- 
ing-house, the hearth in the centre and the living-rooms 
opening from it. The new buildings of Peisistratus rose 
among their more venerable neighbours, conspicuous by 
their fresh stucco and bright paint. The small city 
would be all bustle and activity, a market town just 
blossoming into the new dignity of a capital. Around it, 
and merging in it without the barrier of intervening 
walls, came the cultivated fields and olive groves, a strip 
of deeper green ever marking the course of the three 
little rivers, Cephissus, Ilissus, and Eridanus. Away to 
the west lay barren salt marshes, with the sea beyond. 
To the south was the curving Phalerum Bay with its 
fringe of sand, and the long longships and fishing-boats 
drawn up on the beach. Phalerum itself would be half 
obscured by the rounded hill of Munychia, already 
crowned by a fortress and scarred with quarries. On the 
other side of Munychia, like a blue inland lake, shone the 



92 DAYS IN ATTICA 

harbour of the Piraeus ; only a fringe of small houses and 
a few craft in the haven then marked the spot where 
Themistocles later created his second Athens. 

So much for the seaward view ; and away inland was 
the crown of hills, not barren and stony as to-day, but 
covered with deep woods, the haunt of wolf, and bear, 
and boar, and rich in birds and small game. The forests 
then came well down on to the plain and merged into 
the olive groves and cultivated lands, as these merged 
into the tracts of rock, scrub and marsh that fringed the 
shore. Here, as in a map, the Attica of the sixth century 
revealed the secret of her political condition with that 
eternal division between the party of the plain (rich 
and populous), the party of the coast (struggling and 
ambitious), and the party of the hills (poor and discon- 
tented). This is the landscape of Attica tinted to a 
sixth-century atmosphere. 

And now to make the picture complete, let us look at 
that procession of peasants moving slowly down from 
the mountain-side and approaching the city from the 
east. In the front is a chariot drawn by white 
horses, and on it stands a strapping peasant-girl, clad in 
long scarlet robes, with a brazen helmet on her head, 
a long spear in her hand, and the golden aegis of Athena 
on her breast. Beside her sits a lean and bearded man 
in full armour. The chariot jolts roughly as the horses 
pace along the broken road. The girl steadies herself 
on her spear and keeps her head erect. But her eyes are 
wide with fright, her lips parted. From time to time the 
man at her side mutters an encouraging word. There 
are peasants marching beside the car and waving boughs 
of olive which they have snapped in passing through the 
groves. They have come far and are breathless, hoarse 
with shouting and singing, and parched with the 
dusty highway. As they near the town they push the 
garlands back from their brows, swing their sticks, and 



PROMISE 93 

break out once more into a joyful chant. The towns- 
folk come running out to meet them ; their astonishment 
turns to delight or disdain as they hurry back to tell the 
news. Before the city is reached a joyful crowd pushes 
along the road to meet the peasant waggon. They are all 
in holiday attire, shouting and singing, and taking up the 
refrain of the peasants. ^' Athena ! Athena 1 " they shout. 
*' Athena comes to visit her city !" And then another cry 
is raised, " Hail to the ruler beloved of the goddess ! " 
In this manner Peisistratus returned from his first exile. 
A hoax ? a miracle play ? a drama ? What does it all 
mean ? After-generations have often discussed that 
strange outburst of enthusiasm. Where did credulity 
end and docility begin ? Out of all that shouting crowd, 
was there one who scanned the peasant girl Phye 
with really religious awe ; or was it all a matter for 
throwing caps in the air and taking a show good- 
humouredly ? 

I have chosen it as a typical picture of this old pre- 
Persian Athens. In the first place we have the impetuous 
life of the young, growing nation ; childlike still and with 
a simplicity that was the germ of greatness ; receptive 
rather than critical, emotional, pleasure-loving, and sensi- 
tive to any new impression ; ready to run with the crowed 
and shout for the tyrant to-day, as to-morrow they will 
be ready to run and shout for the tyrannicides ; but 
above all things full of that surging life and energy that 
makes them throw their hearts into every enterprise. 
This is the material which, tempered by adversity and 
taught by experience, will make the fine steel of the 
fifth-century Athenian. 

And on the other hand there is the figure of Peisis- 
tratus, the strong man who gave an interval of peace 
to the faction-haunted city. He was the benevolent 
tyrant who patronized the arts ; who made his court a 
resort of the sculptors and poets of other lands ; who 



94 DAYS IN ATTICA 

encouraged commercial intercourse, and turned the 
minds of the Athenians from their own petty parochial 
concerns to the wider culture of Asia Minor and the 
^gean. This was the age of tyranny ; state after state 
in the Greek world had been forced to learn that the one 
cure for their internal quarrels lay in the temporary 
surrender of their liberty. Athens was not peculiar in 
her political conditions, but she was peculiar in the good 
fortune that gave her Peisistratus as tyrant. Indeed, 
accepting Aristotle's definition of tyrant as one who rules 
for his own good rather than for the good of the state, it 
is difficult to bring the rule of Peisistratus under the head 
of tyranny. Plutarch gives a pleasant picture of the 
relations between Peisistratus and Solon, the great law- 
giver who saw his reforms suddenly endangered by a 
coup d'etat. He alone had been clear-eyed enough to 
see the trend of politics, and when the crisis came he 
was the only one with sufficient courage to defy the 
tyrant. But for all that the friendship between them was 
unimpaired, and Solon stands to Peisistratus somewhat 
as Samuel stood to Saul in those days a few centuries 
earlier, when the Jewish nation had also given itself over 
to a tyranny. 

The progress made in every art during this period is 
amazing. Tradition asserts that it was at the court of 
Peisistratus that the cycle of Homeric poetry was for 
the first time collected and written down. Whether this 
is actually the case or not, the legend is in itself a tribute 
to his reputation as an art patron, and befits the picture 
of his court as a centre for artists of widely differing 
spheres. Nor was this kind of art patronage mere self- 
glorification. It needed an outlook in advance of his 
day to encourage his court poets to work at a subject 
such as the Siege of Troy, in which Athens and men 
of Attica played an inconspicuous part. As Professor 
Bury truly says, an Eastern monarch would have set 



PROMISE 95 

them to immortalize his own exploits ; and in- this 
matter, as much as in anything else, Peisistratus showed 
the wideness of his view. 

In the plastic arts the heavy limestone carving was 
gradually discarded. The sculptor began to use marble, 
and, however far from beauty the result, he had at any 
rate the satisfaction of finding that it need no longer be 
covered with paint to hide the blemishes and irregu- 
larities of its surface. Before very long this art of marble- 
cutting was carried further, and the veined, translucent 
stone was made to acknowledge a subtle relationship with 
veined and glowing flesh. 

The parallel between Florence under the Medici and 
Athens under the Peisistratidae often suggests itself. In 
the Archaic Rooms of the Athenian museums the sculp- 
tors are seen struggling with the same problems that 
beset the resurrection of art in the fourteenth and fifteenth 
centuries of our era. In both cases there was a double 
difficulty to contend with : the limitations imposed by 
the material and those imposed by custom and by re- 
ligious associations. There is, however, one great differ- 
ence. The Italian sculptors had specimens of the best 
Greek work before them, while the Attic sculptors were 
drawing their inspiration from Ionian models only 
slightly in advance of their own achievements. Where 
the Greek had advantage over the Italian was in the 
life he saw around him. No doubt it was long before 
nude models were posed, but there were nude slaves in 
his own workshop. He could go to the gymnasium or to 
the palaestra, and could watch the vigorous play of muscles 
as the naked wrestlers gripped each other ; could study 
the slow grace of the disc-thrower, the poise of the arm 
with the lance, the relaxed pause of the weary athlete. 
Here he had around him all day living statues with the 
sun playing on the modelling of the flesh, and revealing 
subtleties of anatomy that sent him back to his work 



96 DAYS IN ATTICA 

with a cry to Athena to endue his chisel with new 
skill. 

This was the age when the athletic contests became 
famous. In the great games of Olympia, of Corinth, 
and of Athens, all freeborn Greeks were allowed to com- 
pete. A legitimate outlet was thus given to the competi- 
tive instincts of the race, and local patriotism no longer 
led of necessity to broken heads. Perhaps Peisistratus 
was wise enough to perceive the drift of the age, and it 
was as a statesman no less than as a sportsman that he 
showed honour to the victors of the games. His own 
horses competed in the chariot races ; Herodotus even 
thinks it credible that Peisistratus permitted the owner of 
the winning team at Olympia to have his sentence of 
banishment reversed on the condition that he on his 
part should allow Peisistratus to claim the victory. With 
a ruler who threw himself so enthusiastically into their 
pastimes it is little wonder that the pleasure-loving side 
of the Athenians was developed. 

The Athenians learned to enjoy painting, sculpture and 
music. They also learned to consider dancing as an art 
as well as a religious exercise. And here we come to 
one of the most interesting features of the period — the 
religious revival connected with the worship of Dionysus 
and its effect upon dramatic art. Before the days of 
Peisistratus the god from Thrace was acknowledged and 
worshipped in Athens. He had three festivals in the year : 
in December the Rural Dionysia, in January the ^^ feast 
of the wine-press," in February the "feast of blossoming." 
But it is not until the latter part of the sixth century that 
he takes a prominent place among the Athenian divinities, 
and the development of his worship must be attributed 
to Peisistratus. There was one orchestra or dancing- 
ground in the market-place, and another in front of the 
little limestone temple where afterwards stood the great 
Dionysiac theatre. There has also been discovered 



PROMISE 97 

another precinct of Dionysus on the western slope of 
the hill, and it seems evident that about this period he 
became one of the most popular divinities in Athens. 
One may perhaps suggest that Peisistratus himself was 
too good an actor not to enjoy the dramatic interest of 
the Dionysiac choruses. His simulated wound shown 
in the Agora, his entrance into the town led by the 
goddess Athena, the ruse that led to the taking of Nisaea, 
all these must have needed careful stage management, 
and reveal him (like many another politician) as an 
actor inanqiie. It was he who instituted a fourth great 
annual festival in honour of Dionysus — the Dionysia of 
the city. It celebrated the resurrection of the god of 
the vine after his long winter sleep, and took place in 
the end of March and beginning of April, when little 
is needed to set any southerner dancing in tune to the 
triumph of Nature. A feast at this time of the year seems 
not only natural but inevitable ; the Athenians had per- 
haps from time immemorial been wont to celebrate the 
coming of spring in a sacred dance. It was in these days 
that the story element was introduced and the dance 
turned to drama. 

Any one who has lived in Attica knows how the first 
mild days and soft rains can throw a veil of green over 
the brown hill-sides, while a million plants are drawn out 
of the earth and the almond-trees become sheeted with 
blossom ; any one who has seen these things knows the 
advent of spring concentrated into a three days' miracle 
and ceases to wonder that the ancient Athenians gave 
themselves over to a religious ecstasy that was indeed 
the intoxication of delight. The worship of Dionysus 
is associated with rapture, with feelings that pass the 
bounds of speech and express themselves in motion. 
This is why it is associated with the dancing-ground, why 
the dance is in essence religious, and why the whole 
story of the development of the drama is bound up with 



98 DAYS IN ATTICA 

that little limestone temple of Dionysus under the 
Acropolis hill. It will be interesting to consider these 
questions more in detail when we come to stand in the 
magnificent marble-seated theatre of the fourth century. 
For the moment it is enough to note that the dramatic 
art, no less than the arts of poetry and sculpture, must 
trace the time of its flowering to the genial atmosphere 
of the tyrants. 

Within view of the dancing-ground, though at some 
distance away from it, Peisistratus began to build a 
temple to Olympian Zeus. This he never finished, but 
the site was well chosen. The broad platform overlooking 
the Ilissus was probably in those days a well-wooded 
solitude. Hadrian could not better the choice of Peisis- 
tratus when he came to select a spot for his magnificent 
temple. Away across the river the Lyceum, a famed 
gymnasium, was half hidden by its groves of trees. 

To complete the list of all that Athens owes to her 
tyrants two more works must be added, practical benefits 
which perhaps outweighed in value all the rest : a good 
water supply and good roads. An aqueduct now brought 
water from the upper Ilissus, and the town, formerly 
dependent on brackish wells and uncertain rivers, had 
a fine public fountain with water gushing from nine 
generous lion-mouths. 

Instead of the stony tracks leading from the moun- 
tains, hard to find and rough to follow, Peisistratus or 
his sons gave Attica well-laid roads, marked with mile- 
stones and leading to the altar of the Twelve Gods in the 
Agora, which became thus as it were the Hyde Park 
Corner of Athens. 

In short, that which was at the coming of Peisistratus a 
mere country town, is found at the end of his family's 
reign a small capital, with temples, theatre, gymnasium, 
fountains, roads, and everything essential to the well- 
being of city life. 



PROMISE 99 

The Athenians changed even more than their city. 
Instead of the factious crowd of countrymen, rude in 
speech and Hmited in idea, a gay polyglot throng filled 
the market-place. The simple Attic dress with its woollen 
or leather tunic was exchanged for the longer, more 
effeminate and more elaborate Ionic dress of linen : golden 
clasps and cunningly woven borders were popular at 
festivals. For active life men still kept to the short 
tunic that left their limbs free, and the athletes at their 
exercises wore nothing but a girdle — but for city life a 
more luxurious style was becoming common, and even 
Solon's sumptuary laws could not stem the tide of 
fashion. ^* The Athenians," says Thucydides, *^ were the 
first who laid aside arms and adopted an easier and more 
luxurious way of life. Quite recently the old-fashioned 
refinement of dress still lingered among the elder men 
of the richer class, who wore undergarments of linen, 
and bound back their hair in a knot with golden clasps 
in the form of grasshoppers." What a beguiling fashion 
that must have been ! No wonder the old men clung 
to it in spite of changing modes, even as they clung to 
their becoming wigs in the early days of the nineteenth 
century. 



II 

IN THE NATIONAL MUSEUM 

In modern Athens there are still four places where it is 
possible to breathe the atmosphere of those far-away days 
before the city was destroyed by the Persians. The first 
is in the Archaic Rooms of the National Museum, another 
is in the museum on the Acropolis, the third is on the 
Pnyx hill, and the fourth on the Areopagus. 

The National Museum in Athens stands at the town 



100 DAYS IN ATTICA 

end of that long road leading out to the Patissia suburb. 
This Patissia Road is one of the new boulevards that 
have gained for Athens the name of " le petit Paris." 
High white houses with brightly coloured ya/ows/^ blinds 
stand on either side of a broad street where young trees 
are planted. Down the middle of the road there rattles 
with much horn-blowing a little electric tram. On the 
pavements are the nursery parties of the suburb : nurses 
in high Russian head-dresses and silver chains ; nurses 
with gigantic gay caps of frilled ribbon ; nurses in large 
white aprons, stout nurses, thin nurses, lean nurses, 
brawny nurses (but mostly stout) ; and beside them the 
children, little dark-eyed monkeys in tartan dresses with 
ribbon sashes ; a few perambulators, and many babies 
carried on the arm, their embroidered robes reaching to 
the hem of the nurses' skirts. On a sunny day these 
parties all saunter along the pavement, sooner or later to 
drift into the pleasant shade of the museum garden, the 
only playground at this end of the town. There the 
children romp among the shrubs of oleander and arbutus 
and lean over the circular stone basins of the two ponds 
where the goldfish lurk. 

At the further end of the garden there rises a white 
colonnade, shadowing a terrace of Venetian red, in front 
of a large white building. A decorative row of orange- 
trees stands before the terrace like a guard of honour. 
This is the National Museum, a pleasant refuge on a hot 
day. Here are shaded rooms, marble floors, and silent, 
sleepy guardians in long blue cassocks, with the freshness 
of that large garden between the museum and the dusty 
street. The coolest thing that I know on a hot day is to 
turn into the rooms of archaic sculpture, and to spend 
a morning among these stone Apollos, gazing oneself 
back into the earliest twilight of Greek art. 

After the precocious brilliance of Crete and Mycenae 
night seems to settle over the Mediterranean world. The 



PROMISE 101 

old culture is wiped out, the old traditions forgotten. 
The builder has lost the secret of architecture ; the 
painter decorates his vase with angular scratches. 

The few records that remain of this dark period are 
stored in the Prehistoric Room — a small gallery leading 
out of the big hall which is devoted to the Mycenaean 
treasures. A brief visit to the Prehistoric Room is 
enough to indicate how completely the Mycenaean 
civilization had vanished. Here remains of the Pre- 
Mycenasan periods herd together as if that glorious inter- 
lude had never been. 

The gulf between these prehistoric scraps and the 
period of full-blown Greek art is bridged by the objects 
shown in what are known as the Archaic Rooms. Return 
to the entrance-hall, turn into the room on your right 
and you have before you a scheme of sculpture illus- 
trating the growth of that art from the first rude stone 
images up to the mature beauty of the bronze Hermes. 

There is something repellent and yet mesmeric in this 
phalanx of stone figures with staring eyes, wide-smiling 
lips, and rigid limbs. They are a strange company 
gathered from different parts of the Greek world and 
dating from the eighth to the sixth century B.C. Arranged 
in a roughly chronological order the earliest works are 
for the most part nearest the entrance. 

In the centre of the large Archaic Room stands an im- 
pressive figure lately found at Sunium. It is a stone 
colossus, 15 feet high, the figure of a man with a right leg 
slightly advanced. The limbs are heavy and lumpish ; 
the eyes monstrous and protruding; the corners of 
the closed lips turned up in a deprecating smile. The 
ears are treated as a mere spiral ornament. The 
hair is arranged in neat curls. There may have been 
something impressive in his aspect to the sailors who 
rounded the bay and caught sight of him standing in the 
open air on that fine rocky headland at Sunium. But as 



102 DAYS IN ATTICA 

he is now, imprisoned in a grey museum and surrounded 
by others of the same type, he becomes a very nightmare 
of amiable uncouthness. His main significance Hes in 
his strong Egyptian savour. He shows clearly enough 
one quarter to which the callow ^gean sculptor 
naturally turned for inspiration. 

In the same room are other figures of much the same 
aspect. They are all known as ^' Apollos," and it is 
likely enough that some of them stood for an aspect of 
the deity, though others were but representations of 
human athletes. At first they seem to be nothing more 
than stone reproductions of the old sacred images of 
wood. There is something flat and angular in the treat- 
ment of the stone ; the figure recalls the flat board or 
trunk of the tree out of which such statues were first 
made. It is only by slow degrees that changes are intro- 
duced in attitude or anatomy. First the distinction 
of sex is indicated, then a knee or ear is studied, an 
arm is raised, or the bony framework of the torso is 
suggested. 

In the same room another stage of progress is indicated 
in the statuette of the Flying Victory found at Delos and 
long known as the Victory of Archermus. Here the 
artist grapples with a new set of problems. No longer 
content with the search after an easier and more lifelike 
attitude, he now goes further and tries to represent 
movement. 

The figure of the Flying Victory is reproduced on 
Plate 5a. At first it seems simply ludicrous. The lower 
half of the body turns to the right : in trying to suggest 
the movement of the limbs in flight, the artist has only 
conveyed the idea that the goddess is dropping on one 
knee. This attitude was also adopted to represent 
running figures. Compare this Victory with the 
helmeted Runner reproduced on the same plate. Fig. 6. 
There are remains of large wings behind the Victory's 



PLATE 




ARCHAIC SCULPTURE 



a. FLYING VICTJI.Y 

C. TOMHSTONE OK AKISTIOX 



/'. HEL.MKIEI) KL'NNEK 
d. ACKOl'OI.lS MAIDKN 



PROMISE I 103 

shoulders, small wings in front of them, and wings 
on her ankles. If he could not quite make her fly, 
her creator supplied her handsomely with wings. The \ 
upper half of the body and the head are no^- like the 
legs in profile, but are turned to the front. This gives 
the statue a queer twist. The broad, smiling mouth and 
wide eyes seemed turned to the spectator as though 
demanding sympathy for sqme huge joke. Does she 
really expect to be taken seriously ? It is hard at first 
to realize that this is one of the great statues of 
antiquity : that for generations it was worshipped as 
divine, and that in modern days it has been studied 
and discussed as much as any work of art. The ques- 
tion of authorship alone has filled many articles in 
archaeological journals. It is now questioned whether 
the statue has any connection with the pedestal bearing 
the names of Archermus and Mikkiades of Chios, on 
which it once rested, yet it is still accepted as a 
work of that Chian school which in the seventh 
century was known as foremost among marble-workers. 
To contemporaries this statue seemed a miracle of art. 
There is certainly some suggestion of motion. The 
cloak is blown back from the goddess's shoulders and the 
drapery from her limbs, so that the form of the thigh 
is suggested under the clinging folds. This effect of 
clinging drapery, and the traces of wings on the 
shoulders, give this figure the right to be considered as 
a distant ancestress of that most beautiful statue of the 
fourth century, the Victory of Samothrace. Perhaps 
without this crude attempt that other Victory would not 
have been achieved. Certainly the conception of this 
little archaic figure shows thought and poetry far in 
advance of its execution. 

The Apollo from Sunium and the Nike of Archermus 
are typical of this early art where beauty is only relative, 
precious only by contrast with what has been, or as a 



104 DAYS IN ATTICA 

foretaste of what is to be. In the next rooms the sculp- 
ture already explains itself. Here there is the same com- 
bination of gracious simplicity and formal reserve that 
give their charm to the pictures of the early Italian 
Renaissance. The bas-relief that shows Triptolemus 
receiving the ears of corn has a dignity of gesture, a 
sentiment indicated by pose rather than expressed by 
feature, which recall the historical frescoes of Giotto. 
Beside Triptolemus on either side stand Demeter and 
Persephone. 

The funeral monument of Aristion is an arresting 
bit of characterization (Plate 5c). The sharp features, 
bare muscular limbs, and alert expression, stamp them- 
selves on the memory, so that when one tries to picture 
Athens of the sixth century the town of our imagination 
seems peopled with a race of hardy, intelligent soldiers 
such as this. Less ambitious than the Flying Victory, it 
is infinitely more pleasing, and the style is marked by a 
reserve that already tells of power. Of later date than 
the Victory, and of Attic workmanship, it brings the 
history of sculpture a full step nearer to Pheidias. It 
has besides a kind of historical interest, for this Aristion 
may well be the very man of that name who is mentioned 
in Plutarch as the friend of Peisistratus. The story runs 
thus : — 

" Solon, privately conferring with the heads of the fac- 
tions, endeavoured to compose the differences. Peisis- 
tratus appeared the most tractable, for he was extremely 
smooth and engaging in his language, a great friend to 
the poor, and moderate in his resentments, and what 
Nature had not given him he had the skill to imitate ; so 
that he was trusted more than the others, being accounted 
a prudent and orderly man, one that loved equality and 
would be an enemy to any that moved against the present 
settlement. Thus he deceived the majority of the people, 
but Solon quickly discovered his character, and found 



PROMISE 105 

out his design before any one else ; yet did not hate him 
upon this, but endeavoured to humble him and bring 
him off from his ambition, and often told him and others 
that if any one could banish the design of pre-eminence 
from his mind and cure him of his desire of absolute 
power, none would make a more virtuous man or more 
excellent citizen. Now when Peisistratus, having wounded 
himself, was brought into the market-place in a chariot 
and stirred up the people as if he had been thus treated 
by his opponents because of his political conduct, and a 
great many were enraged and cried out, Solon, coming 
close to him, said, 'This, O son of Hippocrates, is a bad 
copy of Homer's Ulysses ; you do to trick your country- 
men what he did to deceive his enemies.' After this the 
people were eager to protect Peisistratus, and met in an 
assembly, where one Aristion making a motion that they 
should allow Peisistratus fifty clubmen for a guard to his 
person, Solon opposed it. . . . 

" And the people, having passed the law, were not 
nice with Peisistratus about the number of his clubmen, 
but took no notice of it, though he enlisted and kept as 
many as he would until he seized the Acropolis. When 
that was done and the city in an uproar, Megacles with 
all his family at once fled ; but Solon, though he was 
very old and had none to back him, yet came into the 
market-place and made a speech to the citizens, partly 
blaming their inadvertency and meanness of spirit, and 
in part urging and exhorting them not thus tamely to 
lose their liberty ; and likewise then spoke that memor- 
able saying that before it was easier to stop the rising 
tyranny, but now the greater and more glorious action to 
destroy it when it was begun already and had gathered 
strength. But all being afraid to side with him, he 
returned home, and taking his arms, he brought them 
out and laid them in the porch before his door, with 
these words, ' I have done my part to maintain my 



106 DAYS IN ATTICA 

country and my laws/ and then he busied himself no 
more." 

Ill 
IN THE ACROPOLIS MUSEUM 

A museum on the Acropolis sounds almost like dese- 
cration, yet I have never heard any one wish the present 
modest building away. It is sunk beneath the level of 
the ground and its roof is hardly visible. Here are 
gathered together all the treasures discovered by the 
Greek Archaeological Society when excavating on the 
Acropolis (1884-90). The collection is homogeneous. 
It has a unity of time as well as of place. The objects 
all date from before the great destruction of the Acro- 
polis by the Persians in 480 B.C. They were mostly 
found under the level of the present Parthenon, the 
broken fragments having been roughly shovelled together 
to make a broad terrace on which the new temple should 
be built. 

Herodotus tells the story of the national catastrophe 
that preceded the great rebuilding : — 

"The Persians encamped upon the hill over against 
the citadel, which is called Mars Hill by the Athenians, 
and began the siege of the place, attacking the Greeks 
with arrows whereto pieces of lighted tow were attached, 
which they shot at the barricade. And now those who 
were within the citadel found themselves in a most 
woeful case, for their wooden rampart betrayed them ; 
still, however, they continued to resist. It was in vain 
that the Peisistradae came to them and offered terms of 
surrender — they stoutly refused all parley, and among 
other modes of defence rolled down huge masses of 
stone upon the barbarians as they were mounting up 
to the gates, so that Xerxes was for a long time very 



PROMISE 107 

greatly perplexed, and could not contrive any way to take 
them. 

'^ At last, however, in the midst of these many diffi- 
culties, the barbarians made discovery of an access. For 
verily the oracle had spoken truth, and it was fated that 
the whole mainland of Attica should fall beneath the 
sway of the Persians. Right in front of the citadel, but 
behind the gates and the common ascent, where no 
watch was kept and no one would have thought it 
possible that any foot of man could climb, a few 
soldiers mounted from the sanctuary of Aglaurus, 
Cecrops' daughter, notwithstanding the steepness of 
the precipice. As soon as the Athenians saw them 
upon the summit, some threw themselves headlong from 
the wall and so perished, while others fled for refuge to 
the inner part of the temple. The Persians rushed to the 
gates and opened them, after which they massacred the 
suppliants. When all were slain they plundered the temple 
and every part of the citadel." 

When the war was over and the victorious Athenians 
returned to the ruined Acropolis they found that the 
work of destruction was complete. With full confidence 
in themselves they gave up the idea of mere restoration 
and set to work to create other and more beautiful 
statues and temples to replace those that they had lost. 
The debris of the old buildings and statues was used as 
worthy foundations to level up the narrow gable of the 
hill-top, till it widened to a broad platform on which the 
new buildings could be planted. It is almost as though 
the Athenians were glad to be rid of the old works of 
art, which already jarred on their taste and were yet 
too sacred to have been intentionally set aside. Once 
displaced, they might be discarded. In any case they 
had proved their inability to protect the national shrines 
and the suppliants in the temple. 

In many of our modern towns the Persians might 



108 DAYS IN ATTICA 

also prove a wholesome scourge. " Make a clean sweep 
and begin again/' is an inspiring programme to a 
nation serene in its self-confidence, and this was evi- 
dently the motto on which the fifth-century Athenians 
acted. They wanted no museum for their discarded 
divinities. They simply buried them where they lay. 

Thus it came to pass that when, in our own day, the 
top of the Acropolis hill was thoroughly excavated there 
was found a rich deposit, dating from before the Persian 
War, and mostly from the century immediately preceding 
it. Many of these fragments are in such excellent pre- 
servation that it is hard to believe they are unearthed 
from a rubbish-heap more than two thousand years old. 
Here are found the painted limestone sculptures that 
filled the pediments of the old Hekatompedon, and of 
some unknown neighbouring buildings. There is a 
brawny Hercules wrestling with a monster, and there 
is the three-headed Typhon whose curling tail diminishes 
as it recedes into the acute angle of the pediment. 
Another limestone group shows a struggle between a 
bull and two lions. The grim persistence with which 
the lion holds on to his prey, the strength in the down- 
pressed neck of the bull are almost Minoan in spirit. 

Here also is a portion of the marble pediment of 
Peisistratus that replaced the limestone reptiles. It is 
much broken, but enough remains to show that it repre- 
sented Athena slaying a giant — a vigorous piece of 
work ; the attitude of the goddess belies her smile. As 
this group was in the place of honour over the central 
temple at the time of the Persian invasion, it no doubt 
met with the roughest treatment. It seems little less 
than a miracle that the gentle face of the goddess 
survived the fall of the temple she adorned. 

The row of maidens or priestesses that were standing 
around the Hekatompedon had less far to fall and 
suffered less than the Athena. They are marble statues 



PROMISE 109 

showing the soft lines and rich decoration beloved by 
the Ionian sculptor, and therefore dating no doubt from 
the artistic revival under Peisistratus. The dress is most 
elaborate. How were these neat folds kept in place ? 
The undergarment is drawn tightly round the figure. 
Over it an embroidered cloak is arranged in small per- 
pendicular folds that usually seem to hang from a hidden 
band passed crosswise over the breast. Probably this 
style of statue drapery became something of an artistic 
convention and was never quite a faithful copy of Nature. 
Experiments have shown that it is impossible to repro- 
duce these costumes line for line without cutting and 
sewing the material, whereas in the Attic and Doric 
styles of dress there is no line of drapery in stone that 
cannot be reproduced by pinned folds. The elaborate 
Ionic dress worn by these Acropolis maidens was in 
vogue in Athens throughout the latter half of the sixth 
century and corresponds with the fashion of more luxu- 
rious dress for men mentioned in a previous section 
(see p. 99). Herodotus has an amusing tale that it was 
introduced to punish the Athenian ladies for having 
stabbed an offender to death with their brooches, since 
this style of dress does not require the heavy shoulder- 
brooch of the Doric dress. This may or may not have 
been the case, but it is probable that it was also part of 
the general cult of Eastern fashion for which Peisistratus 
was in great measure responsible. The style w^as too 
artificial to become permanently popular, and in the 
next century both men and women in Athens adopted 
the simpler and more dignified Doric draperies. 

These Acropolis maidens have some points of resem- 
blance with the Flying Victory from Delos ; being less 
ambitious, they are much more pleasing and certainly — 
there is no other word — more lady-like. I know no one 
who has haunted the Acropolis Museum without coming 
to feel the charm of these gentle ^' aunts" : well-dressed 



110 DAYS IN ATTICA 

and well-bred, something more than mortal and yet not 
quite divine. We can picture them on that day when the 
rough Persian soldiery poured up the hill. They stood 
in line outside the temple awaiting their fate with serene 
dignity, much as the statue-like senators of Rome awaited 
the Goths who stormed their Capitol. After twenty-two 
centuries of burial the dresses of these priestesses still 
keep their gay borders and their faces that demure, 
downcast smile (Plate 5^). 

The last time I visited the Acropolis Museum I found so 
many new acquaintances among the old friends there that 
it almost seemed as if there might have been new excava- 
tions. But the Acropolis holds no more for the ex- 
cavator. The additions are due to scholars who have 
been building up new statues out of old fragments. The 
illustrated catalogue also helps one to new discoveries. 
The archaic animal groups are the most impressive 
of the restorations. In addition to the old fragmentary 
pediment of lion and bull there is now a companion 
group showing a lioness tearing a calf. In the first 
group, though the lion was obviously master, one felt that 
the bull had made a good fight. This new pediment is 
more cruel. The calf is completely crumpled up under 
the huge lioness, a creature made more terrifying by the 
touches of bright paint. Notice her red eye with blue 
eyeball and long, tearing claws. The calf has never had 
a chance. 

This marble greyhound with gentle head and intent 
eye has gained by the recovery of his nose. And here 
are two archaic riders, their noble horses pacing forward 
with arched necks and well-raised feet. One horse has a 
blue mane, one a red. The body of one rider and 
the hands of both are missing. Were their wrists too 
weak to hold their steeds without that torturing bit indi- 
cated, though the metal bridles are missing, by the raised 
head and open mouth of the horse ? It is classical models 



PROMISE 111 

such as these that have given Art the conception of the 
horse as an animal that holds his head high and froths 
at the mouth. A study of the bits used in antiquity 
explains the device by which this effect was obtained, 
and the bridles of the modern Greek are often hardly 
less cruel. 

Most beautiful among the animal studies is this delicately 
outlined flight of birds : great winged eagles and storks 
in alternate panels, which were ranged under the eaves 
of the old temple of Athena. 

IV 

DEMOCRATS AND ARISTOCRATS 

Of the actual remains of pre- Persian Athens little is now 
to be seen except that which has found a place in the 
museums. 

The foundations of the old Hekatompedon on the 
Acropolis need to be interpreted by an expert. The 
columns of the new colonnade which Peisistratus set 
around it are now mere fragments built into the north 
wall of the Acropolis. The Prytaneum, the Tholos, the 
Bouleuterium, the Orchestra in the Agora, the Lyceum, 
have vanished, leaving no trace. The Areopagus shows no 
more than a flight of rock-cut steps, a level floor, and 
two stone benches. The Pnyx is the most satisfactory 
building that remains of this age. Here the retaining wall ^ 
rises to a conspicuous height, and here are the stone 
platform from which the orators addressed the people 
and the altar (also of stone) on which sacrifices were 
offered. From here also there is a memorable view of 
the Acropolis, which gathers itself together, a massive 
pillar of light and shade against the flat, grey background 

^ But recent excavations have now shown this wall to be no 
earlier than the fourth century. 



112 DAYS IN ATTICA 

of Hymettus. On the very top of the Pnyx hill there are 
another altar and platform, the purpose of which is not 
very clear. Plutarch made much of the fancy that the 
double view from the Pnyx ridge represented the choice 
before the Athenian democracy. Should it face the sea 
and follow an imperial policy, devoting its attention to 
colonies and conquests oversea, or should it content 
itself with an interior, self-regarding " little Athens " 
policy ? In point of fact the sea-view is not visible from 
either platform on the Pnyx. What matter ? A dramatic 
gesture in the direction of the Piraeus would enable an 
orator like Themistocles to make his point with proper 
effect whether the sea were visible or not. 

In the first days of the Athenian Assembly the Pnyx 
hill-side had perhaps a natural slope from the altar and 
rock platform down to the valley in which lay the old 
town of Athens. Then, as the audience grew, it became 
impossible for those at the foot of the hill either to see or 
hear what occurred on the summit. In order to remedy 
this a massive circular retaining wall was built, and inside 
it the ground was banked up, giving the hill-top the 
character of an irregular theatre. As in a theatre, the 
audience were now circled above instead of below 
the orator, their backs to the town, their faces towards 
the sea. 

This retaining wall is still an impressive sight as one 
turns from the carriage-road in the Acropolis valley. 
The rocky path that leads to the summit passes under 
these blocks, some of which measure as much as 13 feet 
by 6 feet. It seems to follow the original path used by the 
citizens of ancient Athens, for the rocks are worn smooth 
with use. 

The democracy continued to grow as democracies 
will, and by the middle of the fourth century B.C. the 
Pnyx hill was deserted and the Assembly met in the great 
new theatre on the south side of the Acropolis. 



PLATE VI 




X <: 



w 2 

X. " 



PROMISE 113 

Standing on the breezy Pnyx and looking at the rock- 
cut platform, one tries to picture the actual working of a 
democracy that governed by mass meeting. No electing 
of delegates and representatives here. It is the whole 
body of citizens that decide the action of the State. See 
how they must be bullied and bribed into attendance. 
Look at that cord round the market-place to prevent 
trivial comings and goings on the day of the Assembly. 
Only the road to the Pnyx remains open, and along that 
road go the citizens, driven more ignominiously than 
schoolboys to a house-match or sheep to a fair. 

The payment of a few obols makes up to the poor man 
for the loss of his day's wage. The rich man to whom 
the small bonus is of no value has perhaps his own policy 
to further or is ambitious to shine as an orator. Go they 
all must, willing or unwilling, or lose their privileges as 
Athenian citizens. The picture of Athenian democracy 
seems like a caricature of all democratic government. 
How could a mob thus collected decide questions of 
State policy ? Home affairs must have been difficult 
enough to deal with in an Assembly where conflicting 
interests were personally represented ; but what when it 
came to foreign policy ? No room for fine diplomacy 
here. The Government of Athens bawled its intentions 
on the hill-top, and then wondered that its schemes were 
sometimes forestalled by its neighbours. Think, too, of 
the officials chosen by lot without question of their char- 
acter and experience, so that a man might find himself 
harbour-master one year and another year, say, auditor 
of accounts ; only the most important offices, such as 
the Ministry of War, being filled by officials rationally 
selected. 

That the system met with even tolerable success is a 
glorious tribute to the intellect of the average Athenian 
citizen. It is true that there was power to discard any 
man flagrantly unsuited for office and also a system of 



114 DAYS IN ATTICA 

scrutiny and an account to be rendered at the expiration 
of office. Without these modifying circumstances the 
Athenian democracy could hardly have survived a gene- 
ration. Even as it was it failed. It was here on the 
Pnyx that the pitiful blunders were made, resulting in 
the Sicilian expedition and the Peloponnesian War. But 
the deliberations on this hill-top also belong to the best 
age of Greek democracy, an age that was already pass- 
ing when Pericles proudly claimed, "Athens is the school 
of Hellas, and the individual Athenian in his own person 
seems to have the power of adapting himself to the most 
varied forms of action with the utmost versatility and 
grace." 

The picture of democracy on the Pnyx is not complete 
without its complement, the picture of aristocracy on the 
Areopagus, that hill-side opposite. A cynic has re- 
marked that all the pilgrims who come to Athens may be 
divided into two classes — those who follow the footsteps 
of Paul and those who follow the footsteps of Pausanias. 
The latter spend many days visiting odd scraps of 
masonry, discussing the exact site of the nine-mouthed 
fountain, and finding their joy in the most obscure 
remains ; the former drive straight to the Areopagus, 
and, having looked at Athens from this point of view, 
proceed to discuss the probable site of the altar to the 
Unknown God. Perhaps those days of undivided alle- 
giance are over, but there is much to be said for the 
concentrated vision of the pilgrim. Indeed, it is a mag- 
nificent picture that this chapter in the Acts recalls — the 
picture of a little Jew standing on the little Areopagus 
and waving aside with one gesture of his hand the 
Parthenon, the Erechtheum, and all the accumulated 
tradition of splendour on that overshadowing hill. 

" Know ye not that God dwelleth not in temples made 
with hands ? " " Temples made with hands " — that is all 
he has to say of them. Truly a memorable moment in the 



PROMISE 115 

history of mankind ! And the pilgrims are right who come 
to Athens determined to make real for themselves at 
least this one great impression and not to concern them- 
selves with doubts whether really Paul stood upon this 
crag called '' Areopagus " or in the council-house of the 
same name below. 

Perhaps the impression would not be lessened but 
deepened, if they gathered up the full harvest of associa- 
tions suggested by this piece of rock, and then thought 
of all that the Areopagus suggested to the Athenians 
as well as of the little that it conveyed to Paul. 

The Areopagus is connected in Greek legend with 
mysteries of defiance and retribution. It is the only 
rising ground within bowshot of the Acropolis. There- 
fore in early days it was the natural camp of any enemy 
attacking the citadel. Here the Amazons are supposed 
to have encamped in their war wdth Theseus. Here, later, 
the Persians stationed themselves, slinging fiery bolts 
against the wooden wall of the Acropolis (see p. io6). 

But in the days of Athenian greatness the thought 
of the Areopagus as a post for the foe vanished from 
view, and instead came vaguer and even more gloomy 
associations. It was the Hill of Judgment and the Home 
of Retribution. Here Ares came to be judged after he 
had murdered his daughter's lover, and here in later 
days sat the old conservative aristocratic Court of the 
Areopagus, charged with the duty of clearing the State 
from blood-guiltiness. Its members were to judge 
between accused and accuser, as each solemnly stated 
his case standing by the stone allotted to him, and their 
task was also detective. They were to discover wrong- 
doers and for this end they were given power over the 
private life of the citizen, almost matching those of the 
Spanish Inquisitors or the Roman Censor. Yet Athens 
was grateful to them ; they stood between society and 
the dark powers of the underworld. As the duty of 



116 DAYS IN ATTICA 

the Inquisitors was to punish heresy and save men 
from the devil, so the Areopagus must see to the punish- 
ment of crime lest unavenged blood should call down 
the wrath of the Furies, or lest men should in secret 
depart from those sacred customs by which the State 
had grown strong. Early society is not liberal or pro- 
gressive. It is intensely conservative, afraid to deviate 
from the familiar paths lest unknown terrors should 
befall. 

Beneath the Areopagus rock is a chasm which became 
in time the home or prison of the Furies. In the early 
days of society they had not been thus confined to 
one spot but were found everywhere. Hard to appease, 
insatiable, vindictive, they sent madness and misfortune 
to the house of the murderer and would allow no crime 
to remain unavenged. 

Primitive man suffered throughout from consciousness 
of guilt. It seemed to him that the whole community 
must be punished if the criminal were not made a scape- 
goat. Thus the Furies were represented as lynx-eyed. 
And since vengeance implies a series of infinite retalia- 
tion and the long tale of a blood-feud, the Furies 
were also shown to be thirsty and unappeasable. When 
in the natural course of social development the State 
assumed responsibility for punishment, the Court of 
the Areopagus gradually replaced the Furies, and its 
harsh justice was merciful after their black terror. It 
is easy therefore to see why the Furies had their dwelling 
in the chasm beneath the Areopagus. For centuries the 
city eyed their home uneasily. The legend that tells 
how they were changed from Erinyes, "Furies," to 
Eumenides, or " Kindly Ones," is a pleasant illustration 
of the genial rationalism with which the later Greek 
spirit mellowed the bitterness of its Dark Ages. The 
story is worked out by ^schylus in his play "The 
Eumenides." It shows Orestes tormented by the Furies 



PROMISE 117 

for the murder of his mother. It is true that he had killed 
her in order to avenge his father's death and that blood 
was already crying out for vengeance when, by Apollo's 
express command, he carried out the death sentence. 
The Furies take no heed to the justice of the cause ; 
vengeance is their only cry. Orestes has slain his mother 
and blood must answer for blood. In despair Orestes 
appeals to Apollo. Apollo directs him to Athens. He 
must go to the hill of Ares and there lay his cause 
before Athena. Then comes the magnificent scene in 
which Apollo pleads for Orestes, the chorus of Furies 
reiterate their cry that a mother's murder cannot and 
must not remain unavenged. 

In the end Athena institutes the Court of the Areo- 
pagus, the men of Athens are made judges of all cases 
of homicide. The Furies are given a home beside the 
rock and their name is changed. Athena sums up the 
matter thus : — 

Hear now my statute, men of Athens, ye 

Who try this case, the first of homicide, 

And ever henceforth for the host of ^geus 

This ParHament of judges shall abide. 

I dedicate yon hill (the seat and camp 

Of Amazons when with ill-will to Theseus 

They came in war and fenced that high-fenced town, 

A new town 'gainst the old, and sacrificed 

To Ares whence the rock and hill are named 

The Areopagus) on which the people's Awe 

And his brother Fear shall chase alike 

By day and night wrongdoing ; if the people 

Themselves admit no changes in my laws. 

I charge the people cherish and revere 

Neither a lawless nor despotic form. 

And not to cast all fear outside the State. 

For who of mortals fearing naught is just ? 

If you do duly dread this awful Court, 

Then you shall have a bulwark of the land 

And city safeguard such as no man hath. 



118 DAYS IN ATTICA 

This speech plainly emphasizes the change from the 
era of private vengeance to the conception that the State 
is guardian of the laws. It is a change that must come 
sooner or later in every progressive society. The Greeks 
are peculiar in that they seem to have been so far 
advanced and so far self-conscious that they demanded 
some rational explanation of the change, and that the 
explanation came not from the priests but from the 
poets. 

It is peculiar also to the Greek genius that some special 
spot should have been connected with the story. Legend 
and landscape seem wedded in the Greek mind. And 
in all the near neighbourhood of Athens there is perhaps 
no other place so suggestive of communication with 
the lower world as this upstanding rock with its abrupt 
edge and chasm. 

As time went on the feelings of awe lessened. Cynicism 
and disillusion marked the generation that saw the end 
of the Peloponnesian War. The Court of the Areopagus 
was removed to a building in the neighbourhood of 
the Agora, and justice no longer needed the backing 
of tamed Furies. No doubt it was essential for the 
health of young Athens that the Court of the Areopagus 
should lose its vague terrors, and yet from a sentimental 
point of view I am attached to this group of gloomy 
old aristocrats and their dark alliance with the spirits 
of the underworld. 

The Areopagus seems indeed to have been the chosen 
home of mystery. Somewhere in this same region the 
tomb of CEdipus, King of Thebes, was thought to be 
hidden. In the great trilogy of Sophocles CEdipus comes 
blind and exiled to Colonus. Theseus, King of Athens, 
comes to meet him and show him hospitality. In reply 
OEdipus says : " Son of -^geus, I will unfold that which 
shall be a treasure for this thy city, such as age never 
can mar. Anon, unaided and with no hand to guide me, 



PROMISE 119 

I will show the way to the place where I must die. But 
that place reveal thou never unto mortal man ; tell not 
where it is hidden, nor in what region it lies, that so 
it may ever make for thee a defence, better than many 
shields, better than the succouring spear of neighbours. 
But for mysteries which speech may not profane thou 
shalt mark them for thyself, when thou comest to that 
place alone : since neither to any of this people can 
I utter them nor to mine own children, dear though 
they are. No, guard them thou alone ; and when thou 
art coming to the end of life disclose them to thy heir 
alone; let him teach his heir: and so thenceforth." ^ 

* I quote from a translation by the late Sir Richard J ebb. The 
translation of ^schylus on p. 117 is by A. Swan wick. 



CHAPTER V 

FULFILMENT: BUILDINGS ON THE 
ACROPOLIS 

I 

THE ENTRANCES 



n 



F 



OR the works of Pericles . . . were perfectly 
made in so short a time and have continued 
so long a season. For every one of those 
which were finished at that time seemed to them to be 
very ancient touching the beauty thereof, and yet for the 
grace and continuance of the same it looketh at this day 
as if it were but newly done and finished ; there is such 
a certain kind of flourishing freshness in it, which telleth 
that the injury of time cannot impair the sight thereof. 
As if every one of those foresaid works had some living 
spirit in it to make it seem fresh and young and a soul 
that lived for ever which kept them in their good 
continuing state."^ 

So Plutarch writes of the impression left upon him 
by the beauties of the Acropolis, and the good old 
English of Sir Thomas North's translation fits his style 
well. Even when newly made this Propylaea and these 
temples seemed *Wery ancient touching the beauty 
thereof." Plutarch saw here a beauty which is never 
new or old but eternal. And even in old age, even worn 
^ Plutarch, Pericles, xiii. 

120 



FULFILMENT 121 

and broken as they are to-day, the stones still keep that 
^^ certain kind of flourishing freshness" which seems like 
a living spirit in the pure marble. 

After reading eulogies like this passage from Plutarch, 
it is possible that when the moment comes for approach- 
ing them the eyes are shy of disappointment. But here 
before the portals of the Acropolis there is no need to 
hesitate. Go ahead boldly. Pray only for a clear sky 
and the reality will surpass all dreams. 

The fifth-century approach to the Acropolis was not 
the winding carriage-road, low gate, and steep steps that 
we know to-day. To set our feet on the way trodden by 
the worshippers of old we must leave the modern road 
where it passes the Theatre of Dionysus and must follow 
the footpath that winds up behind the Stoa of Eumenes 
and above the Odeum of Herodes. Here later buildings 
have obliterated the original path, but if we strike off 
above the Odeum and make a straight line for the gate in 
the iron railings under the outer bastion, our feet will be 
on rocks worn smooth by climbing multitudes. Passing 
through the gate — if by a happy chance we find it open — 
we must cross the marble stairs and step on to the natural 
rock beyond. This again is polished by use and cut into 
irregular slanting grooves. From this point the approach 
to the Propylaea seems to have been by a road that 
mounted in zig-zags, partly paved and partly cut in the 
rock. As the surface was worn dangerously smooth, 
grooves were cut to give foothold, not only to the people 
on foot, but also to the horsemen of the Panathenaic 
procession and to the oxen and goats driven up here for 
sacrifice. Inside the gates the same smooth rock and 
artificial grooving can be followed to the top of the 
plateau. 

1 like to be precise about this old rocky roadway to the 
Acropolis ; otherwise with the modern staircase approach 
in our minds it is difficult to give proper dignity to the 



122 DAYS IN ATTICA 

picture of that great state procession winding up to the 
Parthenon. There is another picture that always occurs 
to me as I cHmb this rocky way — the picture of a Httle 
Athenian maid of ten, dressed in a saffron robe, holding 
tight by her mother's hand as they mount the path 
together. She is to play her part in that strange cere- 
mony, the "bear-dance," which takes place in the 
sanctuary of Brauronian Artemis, just behind the 
Propylaea (see p. 79). Awed by the mysterious rites 
before her, comforted perhaps by the vision of a new 
yellow robe, I seem to see her with a face of wonder and 
worship such as Titian has shown in his figure of the 
Virgin, the solitary child climbing the steep steps of the 
temple at Jerusalem. 

In Roman times the approach to the Propylaea was 
given a more pretentious aspect. A large statue of 
Agrippa, having a chariot and horses, was placed to face 
some turn in the winding path. Its pedestal is con- 
spicuous enough to-day. Early in the first century the 
rocky way was replaced by marble steps, and the monu- 
ment of Agrippa was left somewhat stranded, seeing that 
its position had been chosen with reference to the old 
path. The Roman love of pomp is here contrasted with 
the Greek sense of fitness. Pericles had been content 
that his Acropolis should be approached by the venerable 
foot-worn way until at one supreme moment the snowy 
portal of " the entrances " ushered the worshipper into 
the fairyland of marble within. By adding their steps 
and vile patchwork gateway the Romans gave prose for 
poetry. 

The Propylaea of Pericles consisted of a series of build- 
ings thrown right across the west front of the hill. In 
the centre was the high gateway pierced by five entrances 
and enriched with a deep columned porch both within 
and without. On either side of this wonderful entrance 
two marble halls were thrown forward like wings towards 



FULFILMENT 123 

the ascent. These halls had also porticoes so that a per- 
spective of columns led the eye through the great open- 
ings unbarred by gates. The hall on the north side 
was considerably larger than that on the south ; and it 
was used as a picture-gallery. Opposite to it the little 
temple of Victory stood out on the end of the southern 
bastion, sending a welcome blot of shade across the 
steep, rocky road. On either side of the gateway 
the marble statue of a soldier on horseback faced 
the entrance. 

The plan was therefore irregular enough. Had it not 
been for the southern bastion with its little temple, the 
great northern hall would have spoiled the symmetry of 
the whole by outreaching the southern building, and 
even as it is the eye is arrested by a sense of something 
unaccountable. Greek architecture is too logical to lend 
itself to caprice, and there is something more than 
capricious, almost whimsical, in this abrupt shortening of 
the southern wing. In point of fact, this irregularity is 
due to no architect's whim, but rather to the steady, 
relentless prejudice of the Athenian populace. 

Pericles and his architect, Mnesicles, who planned 
these entrance buildings, seem at first to have con- 
templated a perfectly symmetrical arrangement in which 
the picture-gallery on the north would have been 
balanced by an exactly similar hall to the south ; and 
again these two outer buildings would have had their 
counterpart in two halls within the gates. The Propylaea 
would therefore have been in every way double : a 
double porch and double wings both within and without. 
This original plan was not relinquished until after 
the building had actually been begun, for technical 
details of the northern angle within the gate are treated 
as though they were to form part of an inner hall, and 
not as they eventually became, part of an outer wall. 
Why the original plan was abandoned on this north side 



124 DAYS IN ATTICA 

it is impossible to say. On the opposite side, however, 
it is plain enough that the inner hall was sacrificed 
because it would have encroached on the sanctuary of 
the Brauronian Artemis, while the outer hall had to be 
curtailed for fear of encroaching on the equally sacred 
ground of Athena, Giver of Victory. The architect 
found himself in the embarrassing position of having to 
create a spacious building especially intended to strike 
the eye by its dignity and breadth and to place it on a 
confined piece of ground where he was jostled by sacred 
sites that could not be disturbed. The work seems to 
have proceeded slowly, and there are signs that the 
Propylaea never received the last finishing touches. On 
the stones in the walls on the southern side of the 
ascent there are knobs that were left to enable the 
builders to lift these large blocks into their places and 
which, in the natural course of events, would have been 
chiselled away after they were in position. The marble 
of the walls and pavements is left without the final 
surface-smoothing, and the fluting on some of the 
columns is also incomplete. 

But even though the entrance was not all that its 
creators had dreamed, it remained a great achievement 
even in that great age. There was nothing like it in any 
of the other cities of Greece. Approached from without, 
the snowy columns, ranged one behind the other, towered 
up into the clear sky ; seen from within these same 
columns guarded the mauve and green of the landscape 
that swims below : *' a portal opening into the unknown." 

The Athenians were inordinately proud of this group 
of buildings. Their comedians laughed at them for 
" always belauding four things : their myrtle-berries, 
their honey, their Propylaea, and their figs." Epamin- 
ondas told the Thebans that the only way of humbling 
the Athenian spirit would be to " uproot the Propylaea 
and plant them before your own citadel." 



FULFILMENT 125 

II 
THE PARTHENON 

Through the Propylaea the well-worn rock slopes 
upwards to the west front of the Parthenon. This west 
end is but little damaged, and gives some idea of the 
vision that opened to the Athenian, who from the 
portico of the Propylaea saluted this new miracle 
of art. 

It is perhaps impossible for us to understand all that 
the sight conveyed to him : only those who have travelled 
through the midnight of national disaster and issued into 
the dawn of the world's most glorious morning can tell 
the rapture with which the Athenians hailed the rebuild- 
ing of their great temple. The old Hekatompedon had 
been destroyed by the Persians, but even before this the 
building of a large new temple had been contemplated ; 
its limestone foundations may still be seen at the south- 
east corner of the present Parthenon. The new temple 
was to be of marble and was to stand on a wide platform. 
The debris of the old buildings was used to raise the 
southern slope of the Acropolis and a new wall was 
built to buttress up this artificial terrace. Here the work 
paused. When Ictinus, the architect of the new Par- 
thenon, began his work a generation later, he found the 
site already prepared at great cost, and a quantity of 
masonry, columns, and drums that had been made ready 
for the first temple. These latter being out of date he 
discarded. The foundations he accepted, only modify- 
ing their proportions to suit the newer canons of art. 
The width was increased and its length diminished, so 
that length and width were now in the exact ratio of 
nine to four. The generation that built the Parthenon 
was the generation that remembered the discipline of 



126 DAYS IN ATTICA 

the last Persian invasion, but had grown to manhood 
under the genial influences of prosperity. Athens had 
been expanding year by year. She was now the mistress 
of an important confederacy of smaller states. She had 
constituted herself the banker of this alliance, and the 
treasure which before had been lodged at Delos was now 
transferred to Athens. She was rich in memory, rich in 
hope, and rich in this world's goods. She was rich also 
in spiritual energy and in an art freed from archaic 
formalism. In Pericles she had a statesman who was 
also an artist, and in Pheidias an artist who was also 
enough of a statesman to bring the work of an army 
of craftsmen into one harmonious whole. The walls of 
Troy were built by song ; the temple of Athena soared 
out of an exaltation of spirit scarcely less magical. " As 
the buildings rose, stately in size and unsurpassed in 
form and grace, the workmen vied with each other that 
the quality of their work might be enhanced by its 
artistic beauty." ^ Begun in 447 B.C., the Parthenon was 
so far completed nine years later that it was ready to 
receive the great statue of Athena. 

With the entrance of the goddess the miracle was com- 
plete. All that the mind and hand of man could do to 
visualize a great national ideal had been done. Even the 
average Athenian citizen must have been aware that just 
as his life as a citizen was given a fullness more complete 
than anything his individual life could hold, therefore 
this central statue and seat of civic worship surpassed all 
other temples and statues of the goddess. The Erech- 
theum had greater loveliness, and the wooden image that 
it held claimed immemorial antiquity ; the hearts of 
returning sailors leapt at the sight of the sun glinting on 
the spear and helmet of the Promachos, that great statue 
of Athena the Champion placed within the Propylaea; 
the boyish face and curling hair of the Lemnian Athena 
* Plutarch, Pericles, xiii. 



FULFILMENT 127 

showed the goddess as a friend, but the supremacy of the 
enshrined " Parthenos " was unquestioned. 

While the temple was being built Pheidias was prepar- 
ing his statue of the goddess who was to inhabit it. It 
is difficult now to understand the beauty of this work of 
Pheidias, which in the judgment of contemporaries 
rivalled even his famous masterpiece, the Zeus of 
Olympia. The materials were gold and ivory, a com- 
bination suited to these dim windowless temples of 
antiquity. How Athena would shine when the straight 
shaft of light from the doorway fell upon her ! The 
statue was adjusted by an elaborate system of balance and 
pressure, a fact that was illustrated by the popular belief 
that if the figure of a warrior were removed from Athena's 
shield the whole work would fall to the ground. By the 
malice of his enemies Pheidias was accused of having 
made this warrior a portrait of himself. 

Our conception of the statue is based upon descrip- 
tions by old writers such as Pausanias and upon the 
few small representations that have survived. Judging 
from these it would seem that Pheidias gained his effect 
by the size and glory of his goddess and the heavy wealth 
of her golden apparel, rather than by the suggestion 
of personal charm. Athena stood with a spear in her 
left hand, a Victory poised on the outstretched palm 
of her right. On her head was a high helmet with a 
sphinx in the centre and griffins on either side. At 
her left was a shield with the battle of the Amazons on its 
outer face, the battle of Gods and Giants within, while on 
her sandals was carved another battle subject, the struggle 
between Lapiths and Centaurs — three subjects that were 
again repeated on the outer decoration of the temple. 
On the base of the statue a new design was introduced, 
the birth of Pandora. There is so little symbolism in 
Greek art, that it may be wrong to suggest it here, yet in 
any Gothic cathedral how many a Christian parallel might 



128 DAYS IN ATTICA 

be found to this figure of the woman through whose 
disobedience all evils were loosed upon the world, thus 
introduced at the base of the statue of the goddess 
triumphant over evil I 

This prodigality of ornament might suggest that what 
Pheidias added to the richness of his goddess he sub- 
tracted from her dignity, were it not that the size of 
the statue made simplicity of treatment impossible. 
A space of material 30 feet high must be broken 
up by incident and subsidiary design. How bald, for 
example, the height of the sandals would have appeared 
had they been left as blank spaces 2 feet high by 
5 feet long and just near the level of the spectator's eye. 
Moreover the whole spirit of the work required that the 
statue should be thus richly decorated. Athena here was 
guardian of the wealth no less than of the liberties of 
Athens. 

A square of darker stones in the centre of the 
Parthenon pavement marks the place where the base 
of the statue stood, and behind this are traces of the 
wall that divided the temple in two parts. The wor- 
shipper who first sighted the Parthenon from the 
Propylaea must skirt one side of the building and 
enter at the east end. Passing through the outer portico 
he would push open the high door, and then in the 
main hall of the building known as the New Hekatom- 
pedon he would find himself facing the great statue. 
Like its predecessor the archaic temple, this hall was 
also 100 Attic feet in length. No light entered the 
Parthenon except through the high doorways. Travellers 
who visited it before its destruction in the days when 
it was used as a Turkish mosque mention its gloom, but 
mosque doors are heavily curtained, while those of an 
ancient temple probably stood wide. There is an absurd 
legend that the marble was translucent. A French 
traveller, De la Guilletiere, who claimed to have visited 



FULFILMENT 129 

Athens in 1676, speaks of the wonderful Hght coming 
through two polished and shining stones placed near 
each other at the far end of the mosque. De la Guilletiere 
was a fraud, a mere compiler who made his travels 
in his study-chair. Nevertheless a small and picturesque 
fact of this sort is not one that he would have invented, and 
it may well have been gathered from some more genuine 
traveller of the period. Wheler, who visited the Par- 
thenon three years after De la Guilletiere, says : '* My 
companion and I were not so much surprised with the 
obscurity of it as Monsieur Guiliter [sic~\, because the 
observations we had made on other heathen temples did 
make it no new thing unto us." Commenting on the 
transparent stones that excited the wonder of De la 
Guilletiere, he remarks dryly : " They are only of a 
transparent marble, an obscure light passing through it ; 
and several holes being made deep in it makes the light 
look of a reddish or yellowish colour. But as for its 
shining in the night, that's a wonder never heard of until 
now, and as to his comparing it to the brightness of 
a carbuncle, that may pass for one of his hyperboles ; our 
eyes being much too dim to see it." Spon, who accom- 
panied Wheler, says : " I was not, like others, surprised 
at the darkness since I had noticed that all the light 
it received came from the openings which the Christians 
had cut in making the choir ; and that thus in pagan 
times the only daylight that could enter came through 
the doors." 

The temple itself was a simple oblong building with 
a door at either end and a partition-wall across the 
central hall. As far as can be seen there was no opening 
in this wall, and in order to pass from the eastern portion 
or cella in which the statue stood into the western 
portion, it may have been necessary to walk round 
outside the building and to enter it again through the 
western portico. When the Parthenon was turned into 



130 DAYS IN ATTICA 

a Christian church this wall was pierced with two doors. 
The hall behind was known as the Parthenon proper. 
It was divided into three by a double row of columns, 
and here the treasures of the State were stored. 

Miss Harrison has compiled a delightful catalogue of 
these treasures. " Within this Parthenon, in the narrow 
special sense, were kept, as is known from inscriptions, 
vessels used for the sacred processions, furniture, clothes, 
jewels, dresses, and fragments of every description — single 
leaves from crowns, feet of beds, and the like ; in fact, 
such things as were best kept in a chamber easily closed 
and accessible, as a rule, only to State officers, for the 
public exhibition of which there was no adequate reason. 
We have the official list of these objects year by year 
from 417 to 406 B.C. In it are comprised such things 
as a gold crown, gold cups, uncoined gold, a golden 
drinking cup with a sacred silver stand, two silver-gilt 
nails, a silver-gilt mask, silver cups and a silver horn, gilt 
blades, gilt corn ears, a gold image on a pillar, and the 
like. In no case is money registered, so the idea must be 
given up that the Parthenon was a state bank.'' 

Around the outside of this solid windowless building 
ran the frieze, 522 feet long, and outside this again the 
great colonnade with its carved metopes and its two 
gables at the outer ends carrying the pediment sculptures. 
It will be seen that the frieze being within the colonnade 
occupied the place where ornament was least visible, and 
yet in many eyes it is the crowning glory of the whole 
work. It was of this frieze, brought by Lord Elgin to 
London, that Haydon wrote those burning words, which 
introduced a new era in the study of art. Henceforward 
effeminate ApoUos and self-conscious Venuses were no 
longer accounted the highest products of Greek art. 
*^ To these divine things " (he writes of the Elgin 
Marbles) *^ I owe every principle of art I may possess. 
I never enter among them without bowing to the 



FULFILMENT 131 

great spirit of art that reigns within them. I thank 
God daily that I was in existence on their arrival 
and will continue to do so until the end of my life. . . . 
Pilgrims from the remotest corners of the earth will visit 
their shrine and be pacified by their beauty." 

It is only over the west front that any portion of this 
frieze can be seen in sitUy and for this an evening light 
is best. But even in the best light it cannot be properly 
seen. The ground falls steeply away. The spectator is 
obliged to stand immediately under the figures, and a 
backward step may mean a fall of six feet. It is in the 
Acropolis Museum and in the British Museum that the 
design can best be studied. For many years it was looked 
upon as a purely decorative subject. Youths, maidens, 
water-carriers, and elders were placed here, it was said, as 
representations of the city life. Now it has been estab- 
lished beyond doubt that this is no mere procession of 
typical figures. It is indeed a representation of the city 
life, but it shows that life at a moment chosen because of 
its supreme importance. At the great Panathenaic festival 
which took place every four years there was carried in 
state through the town an embroidered robe which had 
been made for the goddess by those Athenian maidens, 
who had been living meantime in the sacred seclusion of 
the Pandroseum. The procession wound from the lower 
city to the Acropolis, and the robe was presented to the 
old wooden image of Athena in the Erechtheum. 

On the west front of the frieze the procession is seen 
starting. Young soldiers are mounting or preparing to 
mount their horses. One is fastening his shoe, another 
donning his cloak. Here, as on the slabs of the Nike 
Balustrade, it is the grace of the daily action that is 
immortalized. On the north side the same knights are 
seen cantering on barebacked horses. This is the chivalry 
of ancient Athens, the flower of the nation. It was for 
the production of these soldier-citizens tempered like fine 



132 DAYS IN ATTICA 

steel that the State had laboured, and they in turn, as 
their oath showed, found in the State the aim of their 
existence. " I will not disgrace my sacred weapons nor 
desert the comrade who is placed by my side. I will 
fight for things holy and things profane whether I am 
alone or with others. I will hand on my fatherland 
greater and better than I found it. I will hearken to the 
magistrates and obey existing laws and those hereafter 
established by the people. I will not consent unto any 
that destroys or disobeys the constitution, but will pre- 
vent him whether I am alone or with others. I will 
honour the temple and religion which my forefathers 
established. So help me Aglaurus, Eugalios, Ares, Zeus, 
Thallo, Auxo, Hegemone." 

In front of the knights come men in chariots, players 
on harps and pipes, then boys bringing water-vessels and 
leading the animals for the coming sacrifice. On the 
south side the same subjects are repeated with infinite 
divergence of detail. As Mr. Murray has pointed out, it 
is as though the procession had divided into two portions 
along the north and south sides of the building to meet 
again at the east end, where the scenes culminate over 
the main entrance in the presentation of the peplos. The 
maidens who made the robe are seen entering the pre- 
sence of the divinities accompanied by the city magistrates. 
In the centre gods and goddesses are seated reclining as 
at a feast. They are clad in the lightest draperies, 
without any insignia of office, gods by virtue of their 
godhead only, distinguished from each other by most 
subtle touches of characterization. 

Outside the frieze ran the colonnade of forty-six 
mighty marble columns. Although so terribly destroyed 
in the centre by the cannons of the Venetians in 1687, 
enough remains to give an impression of the whole 
work. Indeed, in. a sense the beauty and importance 
of the colonnade has been enhanced by the destruction 



PLATE I'/r 




NORTH-EAST ANGLE OF THE PARTHENON 

WITH THE HILL OF LVCAHET ILS 



FULFILMENT 133 

of the inner building. Against the background of clear 
sky the form and colour of each individual column is 
given its full value. To the casual visitor who accepts 
what he sees without further question this colonnade is 
to-day ^*the Parthenon," and may even stand in some 
minds for the type of all Greek temples. It was in the 
proportions of this colonnade that Mr. Penrose dis- 
covered the subtleties of Greek architecture. He showed 
how the long, straight lines of stylobate and architrave 
are made to rise slightly in the centre, so as to counteract 
the illusion of a downward dip which, owing to the 
formation of the human eye, would otherwise appear. 
The columns are also made to lean slightly inwards and 
to taper almost imperceptibly towards the top, thus giving 
the impression that the solid lines of roof and metopes 
are easily borne. The columns in Mycenaean architecture 
are wider at the top than at the bottom, and the effect 
always suggests discomfort. They seem flattened by 
the weight above. Apropos of the proportions of the 
Parthenon, visitors are often puzzled by the height of 
the steps surrounding the colonnade. Except in places 
where blocks of marble are placed as subsidiary stairs, 
these steps are suitable only for a race of giants, and the 
sight of a procession of ordinary mortals mounting them 
would have been ungainly and almost ridiculous. The 
fact is that according to the laws of Greek architecture a 
colossal temple demanded colossal steps. The joints of 
the stones are so precisely laid that they appear almost 
to have grown together. Stuart reports that he tried to 
break them and found them as firmly united as if they 
had never been separate. Very finely ground surfaces 
seem to have some molecular attraction. 

In the carvings on the metopes and on the pediment 
at each end the genius of the Greek sculptor found 
inspiration in limitation. On frieze, metopes, and pedi- 
ments three different problems presented themselves. 



134 DAYS IN ATTICA 

The long and comparatively narrow frieze had to be 
filled with some continuous design, unrolling itself in 
epic cadences without any break until the great culmina- 
tion was reached, and for this the theme was found in the 
Panathenaic procession. The metopes, on the contrary, 
must form a series of complete pictures having sufficient 
relation to each other to give unity to the design without 
losing the decorative feeling of varied movement. Each 
subject had to fill a square panel, a difficult space to deal 
with when applied to the human figure. This difficulty 
was met by the choice of scenes of contest as the subject 
for most of the metopes. The lines of prostrate or 
attacking figures gave diagonal and horizontal curves 
that contrasted well with the repeated perpendiculars of 
the triglyphs. On the north and south sides was the 
battle between Lapiths and Centaurs (the figure of the 
Centaur lending itself most happily to the square space), 
on the west the battle of Greeks and Amazons, and on 
the east the battle of Gods and Giants. 

In Mr. Murray's view the subjects of the metopes were 
chosen to represent the disorderly forces in the universe 
which the worship of Athena would subdue. They con- 
trasted with the stately procession round the frieze much 
as the gargoyles on the outside of a Gothic church are 
meant to contrast with the cherub and angel faces of the 
interior. Round the body of the temple moved the spirit 
of Athens. In the interior was the ideal of order and 
worship, on the exterior the realities of struggle and 
occasional defeat. 

The sculptures that filled the two pediment gables east 
and west were narrative or didactic rather than symbolic. 
They repeated the two primary articles of faith in the 
cult of Athena. On the east end the birth of Athena 
from the head of her father Zeus, on the west the contest 
between Athena and Poseidon. At the east end there 
are two sculptures that remain in place. Firstly, the 



FULFILMENT 135 

horses' heads, which in the extreme left angle drew the 
chariot of the sun as he rose from the sea ; and secondly, 
the head of one of the horses driven by Selene, the moon- 
goddess, as she dropped beneath the horizon on the 
right. The moment chosen for representation is the 
moment of dawn. In the centre of the gable where 
it was highest stood Zeus and Athena, in what attitudes 
we do not know. They had vanished before Carrey 
made his drawing of the pediment in 1674, from which 
most of our information is drawn. Somewhere near 
them was Athena's brother Hephaistos, who assisted 
the miraculous birth by breaking the head of Zeus from 
which Athena sprang. On either side of these three 
stood other deities. Next came sitting and reclining 
figures filling the long angles. These groups are seen in 
the British Museum. Various names have been attributed 
to them, but as they are there merely as spectators, their 
identification is necessarily uncertain. The horses of the 
sun and moon closed in the two angles. The spirit of 
the whole composition is best summed up in the Homeric 
hymn to Athena : ^'Olympos, the abode of the gods, 
trembled at the sight of her, the earth moaned heavily, 
the sea was agitated, raising its purple waves and tossing 
its brine. Helios, the sun-god, stayed his horses, what 
time Athena was doffing her immortal armour to the joy 
of her father Zeus." 

For the west pediment Carrey's drawing supplies the 
main figures of the central group. The moment chosen 
is that after the rival emblems have been created. 
Poseidon and Athena are shown drawing away from 
each other. The olive-trees perhaps filled the space 
between, while the salt spring gushed out behind 
Poseidon. On either side stood the chariots in which 
Athena and Poseidon had arrived on the scene, each 
chariot having a driver, and an attendant at the horses' 
heads. The horses are made to rear as though in alarm 



136 DAYS IN ATTICA 

at the sudden display of divine energy. Behind each 
chariot was a series of figures cut off from the central 
action. Of these Mr. Murray says : " By their presence 
they indicate the permanent effects of the momentary 
dispute of the deities on the district in question — that is, 
Attica. The produce of the land, especially olive-growing 
was to be supreme over seafaring. It was what would 
now be called a ^ Little Athens' policy." 

This, then, was the aspect of the Parthenon as it stood 
for centuries, every detail of its ornament tending in 
some way to the glorification of the goddess. To make 
the picture complete one must add vivid touches of 
colour on the background of the sculpture, on the 
borders of the- garments, and possibly also on the bodies 
of horses and riders ; and to the figures on the frieze 
add metal wreaths and bridles made of gilded bronze. 
Yet even with the help of descriptions and drawings left 
by those who saw the Parthenon before its destruction 
the original vision cannot be recaptured. It is wiser 
perhaps to accept the temple as it is to-day with a 
new beauty even in ruin. 

Thackeray said some unkind things about modern 
Athens, but the ruins on the Acropolis brought him to 
his knees. " To say truth, when one walks among the 
nests of eagles, and sees the prodigious eggs they laid; 
a certain feeling of discomfiture must come over us 
smaller birds. You and I could not invent — it even 
stretches our minds painfully to try and comprehend 
part of the beauty of the Parthenon — ever so little of 
it — the beauty of a single column, a fragment of a broken 
shaft lying under the astonishing blue sky there, in the 
midst of that unrivalled landscape." 



s 

I 



FULFILMENT 137 

III 
THE ERECHTHEUM 

The Parthenon was built to replace the old " hundred- 
foot " temple to Athena. But it was not forgotten that 
this old temple had guarded other divinities and also 
the emblems of Poseidon's trident-mark and the sacred 
pool or *' sea " as it was called. These could not be 
removed from the precinct. The Parthenon there- 
fore, beautiful though it was, did not satisfy the religious 
conscience of the Athenians. There must be another 
temple to replace the old house of Erechtheus where 
Athena had first dwelt. Thus it came about that on the 
Acropolis there were two great temples of the goddess, 
each fulfilling a different function. The Parthenon is 
the centre of State worship. The Erechtheum is, so 
to speak, her home. Athena shared this temple with 
Erechtheus and with other ancient divinities ; with 
Poseidon her ancient rival, with Butes the father of the 
royal house, and with Hephaistos the brother of Athena 
in her domestic capacity as Athena Erganey the goddess 
of good workmanship. Gods and heroes were thus 
sheltered together under the roof of the new building. 

It was the home of conservatism, the refuge of good 
old cults which were no longer fashionable but which 
it would be dangerous to neglect. Here were the sacred 
emblems, witnesses to the bygone strife between Athena 
and Poseidon. The deep triple mark where the god 
struck the rock with his trident, the salt spring " sound- 
ing like the sea," and growing in the temple enclosure 
the sacred olive tree that shot again the night after the 
Persians had destroyed it by fire. 

In the Parthenon the goddess was represented by the 
most magnificent work of art man's hand could pro- 



138 DAYS IN ATTICA 

duce. In the Erechtheum it was her old wooden 
statue, the sacred image dropped from heaven, that was 
cherished. The Parthenon celebrated the glories of 
the new epoch, the Erechtheum retained the spirit and 
the memories of long-venerated things. Yet though 
the Erechtheum was carefully planned to accommodate 
the old cults, the architects escaped all tendency to 
archaism in their work. It is as beautiful as the 
Parthenon, though executed in a different spirit. In 
it there is a more intimate charm and a greater multi- 
plicity of detail. It seems a work of love rather than 
of worship. The carving of the stone is so delicate 
that modern hands, even with modern tools, have never 
been able to reproduce the fineness of the original. 

It is impossible now to tell what subject was chosen 
for the sculptured frieze, but as a whole the ornament 
of the temple is not chosen to teach but to give delight. 
Whereas the sculptures on the Parthenon suggest the 
first articles of faith in the creed of an Athenian, there 
is no religious significance of the six figures of women 
who bear the south porch of the Erechtheum. They 
are known as caryatides, in remembrance perhaps of 
the inhabitants of Caryae who were brought captive 
in the fifth century B.C. Noble captives they are too 
with their finely poised, vigorous bodies, the heads that 
rise instead of bending to the weight of the marble 
porch. One of these figures is now in the British 
Museum — an exile as well as a captive. Her place was 
filled by a cast which weathered to a darker colour and 
stood shamefaced among her step-sisters. Last year a 
new cast was sent from England. 

In 1903 the scaffolding, which had surrounded the 
Parthenon during its restoration, was moved to the 
Erechtheum, and this afforded a good opportunity to 
subject the whole building to a closer examination than 
had hitherto been possible. As a result of this, many 



FULFILMENT 139 

small discoveries were made and two which are of 
capital importance. 

The first concerns the famous trident-mark in the 
north porch. To the left on entering there is an open- 
ing in the pavement, protected no doubt in antiquity by 
a parapet. Looking down through this we see three 
irregular holes in the rock, which in all probability were 
shown to the ancients, as they have been to modern 
pilgrims, as the imprint of Poseidon's trident. The new 
discovery confirms this, the accepted identification. Mr. 
Balanos, the Greek architect in charge of the repairs, 
found evidence showing that immediately over this 
opening in the pavement there was a corresponding 
opening (3 feet square) in the ceiling above formed by 
the omission of one of the marble coffers. This open- 
ing was carried upwards to the sloping roof as a square 
shaft enclosed by four slabs. Thus the trident-mark, 
although enclosed within the porch, was left open to 
the sky. 

The second matter concerns the original plan of the 
Erechtheum. Unlike almost every other ancient temple, 
its plan is strikingly unsymmetrical ; and it has one 
feature — the projection of the north porch beyond the 
west end of the building is absolutely without parallel. 
Again, the elevation of the west front is inharmonious 
and undignified. There also are three ground-levels, 
and three kinds of piers are used. It has been suggested 
that the temple as we have it is a compromise. The 
accompanying plan shows in red what may have been 
the completion of the original scheme. Was it not 
originally intended that the Erechtheum should have 
another wing on the west side answering to that on the 
east ? In this way a line drawn through the centre of the 
building would pass through the middle of the north and 
south porches, while a colonnade at the west end would 
answer to that on the east. The temple would then have 



140 DAYS IN ATTICA 

been truly double, with two cellas, two opisthodomoi, and 
a narrow central hall over the salt spring. In order to light 
this long array of rooms it is possible that those marked in 
the plan 2 and 4 would have been left unroofed (one may 
have been an open court for the olive), number 3 would 
have been lighted by entrances into the south and north 
porches, while numbers i and 5 would have opened into 
the eastern and western porticoes. There is much to 
be said for this hypothesis. Whatever the architect 
originally planned, we cannot believe that any Athenian 
would have been capable of suggesting the plan of the 
Erechtheum as it exists to-day. If Dr. Dorpfeld's theory 
is right, it remains to ask why the original project was 
abandoned. This question is best answered on the 
ground where the western portico of the Erechtheum 
would have stood had it been completed. 

This plot of ground was sacred to a nymph called 
Pandrosos," All-dew," and was known as the Pandroseum. 
Later Greek legend accounted for the presence and 
importance of this goddess by making her the one faith- 
ful daughter of Cecrops (p. 78), to whom the care of the 
infant Erichthoneus was committed. On the other 
hand her name (^* All-dew ") and the extreme veneration 
with which her precinct was regarded, together w4th 
certain mysterious rites imposed on her votaries, indicate 
a cult of even greater antiquity than the legend of 
Cecrops. The Hellenes perhaps found Pandrosos 
already established on the Acropolis when they came 
thither and fitted her into their mythology as they best 
might. At all events her territory on the Acropolis 
bordered the holiest ground where the sacred emblems 
were sheltered by the new Erechtheum, and she, the 
faithful daughter of Cecrops, became, in a sense, the 
guardian deity of all discreet maidenhood. Her precinct 
was the home of certain dedicated maidens chosen from 
the best Athenian families and entrusted with the task of 



FULFILMENT 141 

weaving the sacred peplos which was carried through the 
city at the time of the great Panathenaic festival. But 
though dedicated thus to the service of Athena, these 
" Anephoroi " were not Hke the Vestal Virgins in Rome 
vowed to lifelong seclusion and virginity. The worship 
of Athena was less exacting in its demands than that of 
Vesta ; the maidens of the Pandroseum, though guarded 
in an atmosphere of jealous sanctity not unlike that which 
surrounded the Vestal Virgins, returned to a normal home 
life when their time of service was ended. They were 
but children when they were secluded on the Acropolis, 
and they returned to their own homes at the age of 
eleven. The white garments and gold ornaments which 
they had worn during their time of service were dedicated 
to the goddess. Their nominal task was the supervision 
of the weaving of the peplos, but how much of the actual 
work was done by these little ladies of tender years, and 
how much was left to the priestess and her attendants is 
a matter on which we are never enlightened. In the eyes 
of Athens the maidens were " responsible " for the task, 
and thus the glamour of youth and beauty were not want- 
ing from Athena's garment. What other duties engrossed 
their time ? There seems to have been a mysterious 
element in their seclusion. Even their name "Ane- 
phoroi " has never been satisfactorily explained. Once a 
year those whose term of office was about to end took 
part in a sacred rite without being enlightened as to its 
meaning. Descending from the Pandroseum by the 
steep flight of steps, remains of which may still be seen 
near this point, they made their way to the precinct of 
"Aphrodite in the Gardens," bearing on their heads 
baskets, of which the contents were unknown. Greek 
mythology, which regarded Pandrosos as the type of 
faithful obedience, naturally saw here an allusion to the 
basket that might not be opened. The rite seems older 
than the story, and probably behind it there lies some old 



142 DAYS IN ATTICA 

charm to secure fertility. For the rest, we gather that 
these maidens enjoyed life as young creatures should. 
A bronze statue of Isocrates, represented as a boy riding, 
was put up in " the place where the Anephoroi played 
ball," I and the words conjure up a picture of the white 
draperies, the tip-toe flights, and the laughter that might 
float about the sacred hill-top on its golden evenings. 

Before leaving the precinct of Pandrosos there is 
one other shrine to notice. A gap in the west wall of 
the Erechtheum is bridged over by a huge block of 
marble. Presumably the ground beneath was considered 
too sacred to have a stone laid on it, and may have been 
the legendary site of the tomb of Cecrops. This tomb 
and the precinct of Pandrosos appear to have been the 
two insurmountable obstacles that prevented the original 
plan of the Erechtheum from being completed on its 
westward side. It would seem that the authorities in 
Athens accepted the plan and that it was not until the 
work was actually begun that popular prejudice pre- 
vented the execution of the original scheme. But here, 
as in the case of the Propylaea, the architect was 
tenacious and shaped his building so that at any time it 
could be extended and completed according to the 
original scheme. 

There is therefore a threefold vision of the Acropolis — 
as it is, as it was, and lastly as it might have been. 

As it is, with the outlines defaced and the colours gone, 
but with the still subtler beauty that only time can give : 
the ruddy tint in the fissures of the marble, the mellow 
golden light over its surface, the play of the blue air 
around the broken columns, poppy and camomile 
pressing up through the stones, daylight penetrating the 
mysteries and revealing hidden beauties ; moonlight 
setting its magic on the desolation ; thunder-clouds bank- 
ing the pallid ruins when the wet pavement shines white 
* Plutarch, " Lives of the Orators." 



FULFILMENT 143 

with reflection ; the whole building laid open to the play 
of rain and sun. 

As it waSy with strong colour on the gleaming build- 
ings, with the colonnade of the Chalkotheke, or Store- 
house for bronzes, on the south side of the hill, the 
gigantic bronze image of Athena the Champion, the 
crowd of smaller marble and bronze statues covering 
the hill-top, and the people thronging among them ; the 
worshippers ascending the steep way ; the drivers with 
hoarse cries goading the oxen up the slippery paths ; 
the country-folk staring enthralled, and the citizens too 
familiar with the spectacle to interrupt their gossip as 
they climb. Inside the temple, the immense presence 
of the jewel-eyed goddess in all her divinity. 

Lastly, there is this other vision of the Acropolis as it 
might have heetiy or rather as it once existed in the great 
minds of that day — Pericles, Pheidias, Mnesicles, Ictinus, 
and others whose names even are lost. In this vision the 
Propylaea spreads two broad wings to guard the whole 
west front of the hill; the old haphazard buildings 
covering the north side are swept away, and in their 
place stands a temple, double, like the Propylaea, with 
two wings and two porches. There would then have 
been two temples on the Acropolis of equal dignity — 
the Parthenon, strong in simple lines and bold relief, and 
the Erechtheum, exquisite in its elaboration of ornament : 
one temple set up for the worship of Athena, the guardian 
of the health and wealth of the State, the giver of all 
good counsels, the daughter of Zeus, and the victorious 
rival of Poseidon ; the other glorifying Athena, the 
home-goddess, the sister of Hephaistos, at once the 
craftsman's conscience and his inspiration, and the friend 
of Erechtheus. 

The serenity of Greek architecture must not blind us 
to the pregnant fact that the laws of art were still sub- 
servient to the common law of citizenship ; the artist, no 



144 DAYS IN ATTICA 

less than the soldier, put his service at the disposal of the 
State and accepted at her hands even the mutilation of 
his ideals. 

The artists and statesmen of the greatest age gave mag- 
nanimously of their best, even though their dreams had 
to remain unrealized. It is only in the third millennium 
that their silence has been interpreted, and perhaps even 
this vindication of after-ages was as far from their wishes 
as from their thoughts. It is as though the makers of 
these temples had stamped upon them the device, " I 
abide by what I have done." 



IV 

THE TEMPLE OF VICTORY 

The original date of the little temple to Nike Apteros 
(the Wingless Victory) is not precisely known. It is 
obvious, however, that it must date from about the same 
time as the other Propylaea buildings. One might sup- 
pose that the architects of the Propylaea, when they 
found their plans crippled by the neighbourhood of this 
sacred site, set themselves to make a virtue of necessity ; 
since their entrance buildings were curtailed, they may 
have consoled themselves by balancing the group with 
this little gem of Ionic architecture. To find a temple 
outside the sanctuary gates is unusual, and the fact that 
its position never strikes one as strange is just another 
tribute to the skill with which the proportions of the 
building are fitted to the site. The spot must have been 
sacred to Athena from quite early times and was associ- 
ated with her in her victorious aspect as " Athena Nike." 
Then, as the process of differentiation continued, the 
precinct was said to be sacred to Victory, and Athena's 
name was dropped. But the old wooden image kept on- 



FULFILMENT 145 

the spot was really an image of Athena and not of a 
Winged Victory. So the pretty tale was invented that 
the ground and afterwards the temple were dedicated 
to a Wingless Victory who would never fly away. 

The temple is set on a terrace from which the rock 
drops precipitously. From here one looks right out to 
sea ; not, as the legend of old ^geus might lead one 
to suppose, that the sea beats up to the base of the cliff, 
but rather that the intervening ground lies far below, and 
the eye naturally finds its level on the blue waters of the 
Saronic Gulf beyond. Heated with the steep climb up to 
the Acropolis, it is good to step out on the wide terrace, 
to be greeted by this birdlike sense of space and height 
and by the freshness of a good sea-breeze. Standing 
here one sees afresh how impossible it is to separate, 
even in thought, the temple from its situation. To the 
Greek architect the two formed one whole. The lines 
of the slender Ionic columns follow out and carry on 
the soaring impression of the cliff, and while the rock 
ennobles the temple, the temple rests like a benediction 
on the rock. At Sunium also the temple and its rocky 
pedestal seem to have grown together to a like unity of 
sentiment. From earliest times the Greek genius was 
responsive to that indefinable charm which to-day is 
called the ^* Spirit of Place " and which to the Greek 
betokened the spot dear to a god. In the words of 
Pliny : " Trees were temples of divinities. . . . Nor have 
we more worship for images glittering with gold and 
ivory than for groves and the very silence that is in 
them." Thus it came about that the site on which an 
architect was called to plant his temple was not de- 
liberately selected, but had been marked out by the fine 
instinct of generations. His work was to create a build- 
ing to express the brooding spirit of the place. The 
Temple of Victory crowns the rock as the laurel wreath 
might crown the rugged head of some old warrior. 



146 DAYS IN ATTICA 

The thought of victory was further carried out in 
the decoration of the parapet that originally ran breast- 
high round the precipitous sides of the temple terrace. 
This parapet bore on its outer face a glorious sculptured 
frieze which the worshipper would see above him on his 
right as he ascended the steps of the Propylaea. Such 
of the slabs as remain are now to be seen in the Acropolis 
Museum. The frieze seems to have represented the cele- 
bration of a festival commemorating some great victory. 
There is the draped and wingless figure of Athena Nike, 
and there is also a succession of beautiful winged 
creatures — Victories, Graces or Loves — which in a cer- 
tain gracious artlessness of pose are unsurpassed. Their 
light draperies show the play of their limbs. Two Nikes, 
with shoulders thrown back and down-pressed feet, are 
restraining bulls led to the sacrifice. These two panels 
are evidently intended to balance each other, since the 
brave diagonal swing from shoulder to ankle occurs once 
from right to left and on the other from left to right. 
Another Victory is fixing up a trophy ; another gaily 
balances herself on the bull's back. The artist does not 
insist on the ceremonial side of his subject. He seems 
rather to have allowed his chisel freely to follow the play 
of his fancy. The Nike fastening — or unfastening — her 
shoe might seem to come oddly among the procession. 
Yet here the attitude needs no other justification than 
its own perfection of grace. A Frenchman has made 
the pretty suggestion that the shoe is loosened to indicate 
that this Victory will make herself at home. 

Looking at the temple as it stands to-day, it is difficult 
to believe that from the years 1688 to 1835 its stones were 
dispersed and built into a bastion made by the Turks at] 
the approach of Morosini (see p. 235). Ross, Schaubert,j 
and Hansen are the names of the three architects to whoi 
the present clever restoration is due. The general effect 
is probably much the same as that produced by the 



FULFILMENT 147 

original temple, though naturally its vicissitudes have left 
their mark. The original roof and gables are missing 
and four panels on the north and west sides of the 
frieze have been replaced by casts. The originals are in 
the British Museum. 

This same buttress of rock on which the temple stands 
has other associations than those of victory. It was here 
that the old King ^geus climbed day by day to watch 
for his son's boat returning from Crete ; and this was the 
pinnacle of rock from which he threw himself in despair 
at sight of the black sail. This spot is the natural watch- 
tower of the Acropolis towards the sea as the Belvedere 
Bastion is on its landward side. Here luckless Phaedra 
also came each day to gaze across the sea to the purple 
hills above Troezen where Hippolytus lived, and some- 
where in this rock she placed a shrine to "home-keeping 
love " to quiet her truant heart. 

Long since on Pallas hill, 
Deep in the rock, that Love no more might roam. 

She built a shrine and named it " Love at Home." 
And the rock held it, but its face alway 

Seeks Troezen o'er the seas. 

Her watch also ended in tragedy. In the great theatre 
not far below, the Athenian audience saw her story un- 
rolled by Euripides, and it has been made to live again 
for us not only in the musical translation by Gilbert 
Murray, but also in Walter Pater's curious magical prose. 
It is pleasant enough to linger upon these fresh heights 
dreaming of '* old, unhappy far-off things." Let Pater 
tell the story : — 

" Hippolytus, you remember, is the illegitimate son of 
Theseus. Phaedra, the wronged wife, a fiery soul with 
wild, strange blood in her veins, forgetting her fears of 
this illegitimate rival of her children, seems now to have 
seen him for the first time, loved at last the very touch of 
his fleecy cloak, and would have had him of her own 



148 DAYS IN ATTICA 

religion — the worship of Aphrodite. But Hippolytushas 
given himself to the worship of the chaste huntress 
Artemis. He will have nothing to do with Phaedra or 
her divinity. In an anguish of rage, Phaedra denounces 
him falsely to Theseus, and TheseuL flung away readily 
upon him one of three precious curses with which 
Poseidon had indulged him. Hippolytus is driven from 
the palace, those still unsatisfied curses in truth going on 
either side of him like living creatures unseen. Legend 
tells briefly how, a competitor for pity with Adonis and 
Icarus and Hyacinth, and other doomed creatures of 
immature radiance in all story to come, he set forth 
joyously for the chariot-races, not of Athens but of Trce- 
zen, her rival. Once more he wins the prize ; he says 
good-bye to admiring friends anxious to entertain him, 
and by night starts off homeward, as of old, like a child, 
returning quickly through the solitude in which he had 
never lacked company and was now to die. Through all 
the perils of darkness he had guided the chariot safely 
along the curved shore ; the dawn was come and a little 
breeze astir as the grey, level spaces parted delicately into 
white and blue, when in a moment an earthquake, or 
Poseidon the earth-shaker himself, or an angry Aphrodite 
awake from the deep betimes, rent the tranquil surface ; 
a great wave leapt suddenly into the placid distance of 
the Attic shore, and was surging here to the very necks of 
the plunging horses, a moment since enjoying with him the 
caress of the morning air, but now, wholly forgetful of 
their old affectionate habit of obedience, dragging their 
leader headlong over the rough pavements. Evening and 
dawn might seem to have met on that hapless day through 
which they drew him home entangled in the trappings of 
the chariot that had been his ruin, till he lay at length, 
grey and haggard, at the rest he had longed for dimly 
amid the buffeting of those murderous stones." ' Then 
* W. Pater, "Greek Studies." 



FULFILMENT 149 

Theseus, who had unwittingly murdered his father, finds 
that he has now murdered his son through that same rash 
carelessness. This seaward corner of the Acropolis is 
indeed the home of tragic memories. The Athenians in 
Pericles' day felt the associations of the spot too strong to 
be resisted and raised their protest in a Philistine revolt 
against one of the noblest projects of architecture. Well, 
one may forgive them. They lost the ideal Propylaea, but 
they gained the Nike temple. 



CHAPTER VI 
ON THE SOUTH SIDE OF THE HILL 

I 

THE DIONYSIAC THEATRE 



k 



THE Dionysiac Theatre is the sunniest spot in 
Athens. The tourists know it and bring their tea- 
baskets. The hzards know it and steal out to bask 
on marble chairs dedicated to priests and magistrates. 
The Athenian audiences of classical times must also have 
known it as they sat there the whole of a spring day with 
the sun in their eyes and the rock behind them glowing 
like a furnace. 

For the winter months it was, and still is, an ideal 
spot. The long lines of marble seats sloping away in a 
perspective of curves now mellowed to tones of lemon 
and pale gold, in shadow a pearl-grey. In front the 
marble pavement of the orchestra is broken with rough 
seams and stains. The chair of state belonging to the _ 
Dionysiac priest is the most perfect bit of symmetry of its 1 
kind in existence, and fortunately no Lord Elgin has been 
at pains to remove it. Beyond the broken stones and the 
hilly middle distance there are white and poppy-coloured 
sails dotting the gulf, with ^©gina's purple peaks behind. 
Overhead the sky of clear wintry blueness, so different 
from summer's leaden heat-shroud 

Under the south slope of the Acropolis at its eastern 

190 



a 



ON THE SOUTH SIDE OF THE HILL 151 

end the ground has a steady downward gradient and 
shows a tendency to break into natural terraces. It is not 
as at Epidaurus, a theatre made by Nature, yet Nature lent 
herself kindly to the work, and man had need only to 
scarp out the hill-side with tiers of seats, to support the 
curving sides with masonry, and to level the central ring. 
That the natural formation of the ground has been taken 
into consideration is plain from the irregular design of 
the theatre ; the two sides are not symmetrical and at the 
top it has no definite boundary. The seats merge into 
the rock. As a London crowd will swarm lamp-posts and 
climb railings to watch a passing show, so the Athenian 
spectators covered every obtainable point of vantage. 
Behind the stone seats the rock itself gave sitting or 
standing accommodation, and every space would seem to 
have been filled, though the performance could have been 
only imperfectly seen and at this distance hardly heard. 
In the sixth century there was no theatre here, but 
remains of a little temple have been found, with a stone 
circle marking the dancing-place before it. Here, in 
the time of Peisistratus, Dionysus was worshipped. Even 
in those early days the religious dance was well on its 
course of dramatic development. Already to the slow 
revolving chorus-dance with its alternating strophe and 
antistrophe had been added the quick musical measure of 
the Dithyramb. After the union of these two the evolu- 
tion of the true drama followed fast, and the turning- 
point was reached in the days of Peisistratus, when the 
popularity of Homer led to the introduction of plots 
taken from the Homeric cycle. Once it had been 
shown possible to improve on the old stereotyped 
forms, other developments came naturally as the artistic 
spirit was spurred to further experiment. With the 
leader as interlocutor and the chorus as reciters the 
unfolding of the old, well-known stories at once became 
dramatic. 



152 DAYS IN ATTICA 

When to question and answer was added further 
dialogue, single members of the chorus assumed the 
parts of the chief characters in the play. As these 
roles became prominent the importance of the chorus 
diminished, until in the fully developed drama they 
appear as mere commentators. Their remarks in- 
terrupt the progress of the story. Sometimes the in- 
terruption has the highest dramatic value, as in the plays 
of Euripides, when a pure lyric relieves for a moment 
the situation too highly charged with emotional intensity. 
Sometimes the interruptions seem to introduce an 
element of commonplace — as for instance in the OEdipus 
of Sophocles when the king appears with blood streaming 
from the empty eye-sockets, and the chorus can strike 
no deeper note than the cry — 

Alas, unhappy man ! I would have held 

Some converse with thee, but thy looks affright me ; 

I cannot bear to speak with thee. 

This prominence of the chorus is, however, too deeply 
inwrought into the substance and essence of the drama 
for any escape from it to have been possible. Neither 
authors nor audience would have desired it. In essence 
the chorus is the play. A tragedy without its chorus 
would have been unthinkable. The enfranchisement of 
comedy was marked when it also was *' given a chorus," 
and here its presence is invaluable. If there is any 
fundamental essence of humour peculiar to all ages, it 
is surely found in the serious comments of the spectator 
who cannot see a joke. Yet it was not without reason 
that the Athenian Government showed reluctance to 
admit comedy to the full rights of the drama. For 
whereas tragedy was essentially religious, comedy could 
at most be only moral. It was Aristophanes who won 
for comedy its permanent place in the Attic theatre. 
"Starting with what is always, prima faciCf the prose 



ON THE SOUTH SIDE OF THE HILL 153 

of everyday life, its acrid controversies, its vulgar and 
tedious types, and even its particular individuals — for 
Aristophanes does not hesitate to introduce his con- 
temporaries in person on the stage — he fits to this gross 
and heavy stuff the wings of imagination, scatters from 
it the clinging mists of banality and spite, and speeds it 
forth through the lucid heaven of art amid peals of 
musical laughter and snatches of lyric song." ^ 

To say that Greek genius showed at its best when 
it was working within formal limits is to insist on a 
commonplace, yet until the strictly conventional nature 
of the Greek play is grasped, how shall we understand 
the moving excitement of the throng who flock eagerly 
twice a year to their theatre to endure the fatigue and 
discomfort of sitting the whole day through among a 
heated crowd, for the sake of seeing the last new play ? 
The enthusiasm that brings them here is not the same 
that inspires the queue of weary Londoners waiting for 
a seat in the pit. The Athenian is not to have his pulses 
stirred by sensational presentations of emotion, by 
broken cadences of voice, by ravishing postures. His 
actors will walk on high shoes, the play of their features 
will be hidden by masks. All sweet cadences will be 
lost in that vast, open space that surely requires some 
artificial aid for the voice. Neither will his eyes be 
delighted by elaborate scenery. The costume is stereo- 
typed and varies little from one time to another, and 
the scenery is that same colonnaded hall which he saw 
in last year's play, if indeed it can be called scenery 
at all. For all this he cares nothing. Eyes and ears 
are straining towards the ring where the chorus circle. 
He must not miss a line of this magical music of Euri- 
pides nor one of Aeschylus' sonorous chants. 

This was the spirit that brought the Athenians in 
such crowds to their great theatre. Apart from the fact 
' G. Lowes Dickinson, "Greek View of Life." 



154 DAYS IN ATTICA 

that the play was given once only, and had there- 
fore all the excitement of a first night added to that 
of the ^' positively last performance," there was also this 
keen, critical instinct to be satisfied. Every Athenian 
was an art critic. His verdict was a serious matter to 
himself and to others. What the Athenians approved or 
condemned would be in the same measure approved 
or condemned throughout Greece. That they deserved 
their fame is seen in the fact that posterity has in very 
few cases reversed the judgment of contemporaries. 
The career of the poet must have been an exciting 
one under this regime. Within a few hours of the 
production of his play its reputation throughout the 
Greek world was fixed. 

Another characteristic of Greek poetry, dependent on 
the convention of the drama, is that it had to be judged 
by ear alone. This seems to have given to the Athenian 
audience an especial sensitiveness to the beauty of the 
spoken word. Invaluable in art, this quick receptiveness 
became a dangerous asset in politics, and the name wrog, 
meaning literally a long-eared owl, was the nickname 
invented for those too easily carried away by eloquence. 

The Dionysiac Theatre at Athens is neither the largest 
nor the most beautiful that the world has seen, but 
standing here we realize that this is the theatre par 
excellence. The original dancing-ground of the chorus, 
once perhaps a mere threshing-floor, has been traced 
partially outside the present orchestra. It formed a 
complete circle and therefore was better suited for dances 
than for the production of performances that must be 
viewed from one side only. Very early its south side 
must have been blocked by the skene or shed in which 
the actors dressed. In time this came to bear the 
scenery, and became the " scene " ; the stage in front of 
it was known as the proskenion. The earliest stage 
of which anything now exists is that which was finished 



ON THE SOUTH SIDE OF THE HILL 155 

under the administration of Lycurgus in the fourth 
century B.C. It consisted of a hall with a tower at either 
end and a portico behind. The long lines of masonry 
that run right across the enclosure and cut the walls 
of the earliest temple, belong to this stoa. With a plan 
all these lines can be made out on the spot. It must be 
confessed that the first impression of these ruins behind 
the stage is one of mere confusion. A good plan is given 
in Prof. E. Gardner's "Ancient Athens." The first scenery 
was probably merely leaned against the wall between the 
towers. Some time after Lycurgus a row of columns was 
set up some feet in advance of the old wall and behind 
the foundations of the front walls of the towers. The 
result of this change would be to make a longer and 
more even front in place of the deep recess with towers. 
Traces of these columns may still be seen on the right- 
hand side of the stage as we face the auditorium. 
Whether or no these columns supported a raised stage 
is a matter on which archaeologists are still divided. 
Enough to note that the stage grew while the orchestra 
shrank, as the importance of the acting came to over- 
shadow that of the chorus. In the reign of Nero another 
stage was built and by this time it is certain that the 
actors used a raised platform. The front line of the 
stage comes again considerably nearer the orchestra; 
the back wall is, however, the only line that it is easy 
to make out on the spot. Lastly comes the stage of 
Phaedrus running from wing to wing of the auditorium. 
A flight of stone steps leads up to the middle of this 
stage and on the top step is the inscription recording its 
erection by Phaedrus, " a governor of life-giving Attica." 
The inscription seems to date from the third century 
A.D. Whoever this Phaedrus may have been, he did 
not scruple to avail himself of the good work of his 
predecessors. The front of his stage is a patchwork of 
older reliefs which do not fit their place and have been 



156 DAYS IN ATTICA 

much mutilated. The first relief on the left shows Zeus 
seated, while Hermes stands by with the child Dionysus 
in his arms. The second shows Icarius sacrificing the 
goat to Dionysus. Further along to the right is the 
figure of Silenus. To the generations of cramped 
spectators he must have seemed the typification of 
discomfort as he crouched in the niche that is obviously 
too small for him. Remains of a similar figure have 
been found. This probably filled a corresponding niche 
on the other side of the stage. 

In Roman times the theatre seems to have been used 
for gladiatorial shows, and it was on this account that the 
upright slabs of marble were placed along the front of 
the seats to protect the spectators. To this period also 
belongs the covering of the gutter which runs around 
the orchestra and which originally carried off the rain- 
water for the whole building. 

The first row of carved marble chairs emphasizes the 
essentially religious character of these dramatic per- 
formances. Here in the central seat of honour sat the 
Priest of Dionysus. The proportions of its curving 
back, the arms finished with griffins' claws, and the 
delicate carving of its low reliefs, still give a thrill of 
pleasure. Below the seat are griffins fighting with 
Arimaspians, on its back crouch the Dionysiac satyrs, 
while on each side kneels a dainty Eros setting a cock 
to fight. The strange, free imagination of the Greeks 
saw no incongruity in choosing a cock-fight as a 
subject for the decoration of their priest's chair. 
One author mentions an annual cock-fight in the 
theatre which somehow commemorated the Persian 
invasion. On each side of the Dionysiac Priest sat the 
priests of the various temples in Athens, some forty 
in number, while here places were also reserved for the 
chief magistrates and heralds. The second rank of seats 
are without backs. Here the populace came, the whole 



ON THE SOUTH SIDE OF THE HILL 157 

theatre holding, it is estimated, at least twenty thousand 
people. Plato indeed makes an estimate of thirty 
thousand. When our modern theatres are built with a 
box for the bishop, a row of stalls for vicars and 
magistrates, and seats without backs for the mere play- 
goer, then we may also hope for a pure classical drama. 

The seats are carefully planned with a view to seating 
as many people as possible. Thirteen inches is all the 
space allowed to each spectator, but the base of the seat 
above is slightly hollowed out to allow him to sit 
well back in his seat. Each row thus acted as footstool 
to those above. The lines defining the rightful province 
of each spectator are carefully marked, but in spite of this 
there must have been plenty of shoving and grumbling. 
Even in the performances at the Roman circuses to 
which ladies were admitted Ovid shows that manners 
were far from perfect. ^'You who sit to our right be 
considerate of this lady, you hurt her by leaning up 
against her, and you who sit behind us draw back your 
legs, and be civil enough not to press our backs with 
your hard knees." 

Dr. D5rpfeld, to whose study of the theatre most of 
our knowledge is due, has discovered some holes at the 
ends of some of the lower seats which may have held 
supports for some kind of awning ; but it is difficult to 
see how this could have been arranged without interrupt- 
ing the view of those above. I believe that the true 
Athenian never shrank from the sun but came here to 
bask, lizard-like, as he watched the play. 

We shall get but a partial idea of the place that the 
theatre occupied in the life of the city if we think of 
it only in its connection with the drama, gladiatorial 
shows, and cock-fighting. Once the populace had 
acquired the habit of assembling here it was soon found 
a much more convenient meeting place than the old 
building on the Pnyx. Even as early as the time of 



158 DAYS IN ATTICA 

Thucydides some of the national assemblies had taken 
place here. By the time of Lycurgus the theatre had 
become the regular place of assembly, and he seems 
to have acknowledged the change when he covered the 
rocky hill-side with the marble benches that we see 
to-day. He also set up statues of the three great tragic 
poets, -^schylus, Sophocles, and Euripides. 

To the east of the theatre there lay a great Odeum or 
concert hall built by Pericles. Its exact site is no longer 
known, but Vitruvius says that the Odeum stood near 
as you went out of the theatre on the left. 

One picture history has handed down to us of this 
Odeum with its sloping tentlike roof and of the great open 
theatre lying silent and deserted in the moonlight on 
that night of May in the year 415 B.C. whose doings 
thrilled the whole conscience of Athens with horror. 
Suddenly this moonlit space was filled with dark 
figures who moved about and talked together without 
noticing the one solitary witness lurking unknown among 
the shadows of the stage buildings. As dramatic as any 
of the plays produced here is the account thus briefly 
given by that one witness, whose word alone condemned 
so many of his fellow-citizens and lost for Athens her 
best commander in the Sicilian expedition. " Dioclides 
said that he had a slave at Laurium, and that he had 
occasion to go to him for a payment due to him. He 
rose early, mistaking the time, and set forth ; it was a full 
moon. When he had come to the Gateway of Dionysus 
he saw several persons descending from the Odeum into 
the orchestra ; afraid of them he drew into the shade 
and crouched down between the pillar and the column 
with the bronze statue of the general. He saw persons 
about three hundred in number standing round in 
groups of fifteen or some of twenty men, and seeing 
their faces in the moonlight he recognized most of them. 
After seeing this he went to Laurium and on the follow- 



ON THE SOUTH SIDE OF THE HILL 159 

ing day heard of the mutilation of the Hermae ; and so 
he knew immediately that these men were the culprits." 



II 

THE DRAMATIC MONUMENTS 

The dramas performed in the theatre at the feast of 
Dionysus were competitive. Each piece was produced 
at the expense of some public-spirited citizen who paid 
for the hire of the chorus and the staging of the play. 
This citizen was known as the choraguSy and naturally he 
did his utmost to win the popular favour. If his play 
were voted the best at that festival a prize was awarded 
in token of his victory, and he was allowed to set up 
a monument in the neighbourhood of the theatre bearing 
a bronze tripod in a conspicuous position. Much 
ingenuity was spent in devising different types of 
pedestal to hold the tripod. One contained a small 
statue by Praxiteles. The few remaining in place to-day 
show widely different types. In time the region round 
the theatre came to be filled with these so-called 
choragic monuments, and a street made through it 
was known as the " Street of Tripods." 

After the end of the fourth century B.C. it was no 
longer possible to find private patrons to finance the 
production of the plays and the State had to provide the 
funds. By this time the contests must have lost much of 
that eager and wholesome rivalry that called forth the best 
powers of playwright, chorus, and actors. These tripod 
monuments date therefore from the period when the 
drama was at its best. 

At the end of a street opposite the Arch of Hadrian 
there is still a small graceful structure, looking like a 
tiny round tower. In Turkish times this was known as 



160 DAYS IN ATTICA 

the ** Lantern of Demosthenes," owing to its supposed 
resemblance to a Turkish lantern. The origin of the 
supposed connection with Demosthenes is lost. An in- 
scription on the architrave of the south-east side shows 
that in reality it was a monument erected by one 
Lysicrates in commemoration of his victory as choragus 
in one of the Dionysiac festivals which took place 
334-3 B.C. The size of the tripod has evidently deter- 
mined the proportions of the whole building, which is made 
to carry the crowning feature as high as possible without 
allowing it to appear insignificant. The fluted Corinthian 
columns bearing the circular architrave and frieze seem 
naturally to suggest to the eye the slender horizontal 
lines of tripod with its shallow basin. One has only 
to imagine the tripod on the summit of the acanthus 
ornament that arises from the marble ^' thatch of laurel 
leaves " and at once there is a new satisfaction in the 
whole design. The acanthus ornament falls into place 
and the eye leaves off searching for an opening in the 
curved marble sides as the building changes from a 
dwarf temple into a fitting pedestal for the trophy. 

We know from Pausanias that this building stood 
among many others, some of them containing master- 
pieces. It was therefore designed to hold its own by 
appropriateness and harmony rather than by any wealth 
of ornament. The tripods in low relief between the 
capitals and the frieze above are both strictly to the 
point. Dionysus is seated on a cliff, accompanied by his 
panther and attendant satyrs. He has encountered 
Tyrrhenian pirates who do not believe in his divinity and 
is changing them into dolphins. One of them may be 
seen leaping into the sea, already half a dolphin. Casts of 
this frieze are shown in the British Museum. 

The building is of especial interest as the oldest 
example of Corinthian architecture extant. Standing 
in full view of the giant columns of the Olympieum 



ON THE SOUTH SIDE OF THE HILL 161 

the contrast reveals the range of the Corinthian order 
to which both belong. 

About 1660 the " Lantern " was built into the walls 
of a Capuchin convent and reserved by the monks as 
a circular study attached to their guest-chamber. Here 
Byron, Dodwell, Gait, and other travellers stayed when 
they came to Athens. There was no proper inn in the 
town and the hospitality of the monks was freely offered 
(see p. 241). 

In the rock of the Acropolis overlooking the Dionysiac 
Theatre there are two natural caves. The one imme- 
diately above the theatre was adapted as a choragic 
monument by a certain Thrasyllus (320 B.C.) who must 
have been a man of original ideas. He walled up the 
mouth of the cave and set three Doric pilasters on the 
face of the wall. These supported an architrave which 
probably carried the emblematic tripod. An inscription 
recording the victory of Thrasyllus may be seen lying in 
front of the cave, though it is now broken. His son 
Thrasykles added two more inscriptions recording two 
more victories when he was president of the games fifty 
years later, and these also may be found lying near the 
spot. Either father or son crowned the edifice with the 
seated statue of Dionysus now in the British Museum. 
This monument of Thrasyllus was destroyed by the Turks 
when they besieged the Acropolis in 1826-7, but the 
spot is still conspicuous by reason of the two Corinthian 
columns which stand on the rock above the cave. These 
were also put up to support tripods and are examples of 
the more commonplace type of choragic monument. 
They remain a standing perplexity to the casual sight- 
seer. They suggest the remains of a temple, but the 
narrow ledge of rock on which they perch makes this 
out of the question. It is strange how many visitors 
fail to track them in the guide-books and come home 
saying, " But what are those two odd columns above 

M 



162 DAYS IN ATTICA 

the theatre ? " The second cave is part of the great 
hospital-temple of Asklepios. 



Ill 

THE PRECINCT OF ASKLEPIOS 

Perhaps you have lingered on the Acropolis till the 
blue-coated guardian warns you that the gates are 
closing. Darkness overtakes you as you descend the hill 
by the footpath on its south side, and glancing up for 
one last backward glimpse of the Acropolis your eye is 
caught by a golden star twinkling high up in the rock. 
This is the light in the shrine behind the monument of 
Thrasykles. A tiny light lower down burns before the 
picture of the Virgin in the cave where the healing spring 
of Asklepios rises. This is another example of the con- 
tinuity of sacred sites. Where Asklepios used to work 
his miracles the Virgin now heals the sick and sends her 
blessings of prosperity and fruitfulness to the young 
couples who hang their wedding wreaths before her shrine. 

Visited by daylight the little cave is plain enough. A 
spring of water wells up through the stone and flows 
round the cave in a rock-cut channel. Outside are the 
remains of the sanctuary of Asklepios, somewhat con- 
fused by the superposition of a Byzantine church, but 
worth careful study for the light they throw on this 
amazing cult, with its combination of faith-healing, open- 
air cure, and the attractions of a fashionable watering- 
place. It is not nearly so large nor so elaborate as the 
more famous Asklepieum at Epidaurus or that at Cos, but 
the main features are easily traced ; a small temple, an 
altar, and the long portico with a double row of columns. 
In this portico the patients lay in long rows along the 
marble pavement, and when night fell they watched for 



ON THE SOUTH SIDE OF THE HILL 163 

the god and his attendant snakes to come and work 
miraculous cures. Possibly the cure was not always 
instantaneous, but the open-air life, the excitement of a 
possible apparition, the social intercourse, and the neigh- 
bourhood of the theatre would all combine to make an 
invalid inclined to continue his cure for a second season. 
Like Homburg and Aix-les-Bains, this sanctuary of 
Asklepios made a little spring the foundation for a 
great commerce in the pleasure-loving and pain-fearing 
instincts of mankind. There is a well-known passage in 
the " Plutus '* of Aristophanes which delightfully satirizes 
the humbug that no doubt often accompanied the miracu- 
lous cures. The patient is none other than Plutus the 
god of wealth who arrives in Athens as a blind stranger. 
A servant who has gone with the sick man to the temple 
describes their adventures with much humour to his 
master's wife. 

* We hasted to the temple of the god 
Leading the creature then the wretchedest, 
But now the happiest beyond compare, 
And the most fortunate in all the world ; 
And, first we took him down to the seashore. 
And washed him there. 

This done we brought him to the holy place ; 

And, after wafers and like ofEerings 

Had on the altar solemnly been laid, 

And cake burnt in the flame Hephaestus loves. 

We put our Plutus properly to bed, 

And each of us arranged his own straw couch. 

But I could get no sleep ; 

I was excited by a porridge pot 

Which stood a little distance from the head 

Of an old lady, and I felt a strange 

Unearthly longing to that pot to crawl. 

As I looked up I caught sight of the priest 

Snatching the cakes and the dried figs from off 



^ I quote from the translation of Lord Justice Kennedy. 



164 DAYS IN ATTICA 

The holy table. Then he went the round 

Of all the altars questing on the chance 

That wafers had been left there. All he found 

He — consecrated — in a bag ; and I, 

Inferring for such act great piety, 

Rose up that pot of porridge to invade. 

Wife. Most rash of men, did you not fear the god ? 

Servant, Indeed I did, I feared that crown and all 

He'd come and reach the pot before myself. 

You see I'd learnt a lesson from the priest. 

Well, the old lady noticing some noise 

I made in moving to remove the pot, 

Upraised her hand ; I gave a hissing sound 

As a snake does and gripped it with my teeth. 

She without loss of time withdrew her hand. 

Rolled all her blankets round her and lay still. 

Much of the porridge I at once devoured 

And, when I'd had my fill, leapt back to bed . . . 

Then the god 

Came in a manner quite professional. 
Examining each patient in his turn. 

• ••••• 

He went and sat by the bedside 

Of little Plutus. First of all, he laid 

His hand upon the patient's head ; and next, 

With a clean towel wiped the eyelids' edge : 

Then Panacea with a purple veil 

Covered the head and face ; this done, the god 

Gave a low whistle, and there darted forth 

Out of the shrine two serpents of huge size. 

The pair crept quietly 

Under the veil, and as it seemed to me. 
Licked Plutus round the eyelids ; then, before 
You, madam, could toss off ten cups of wine, 
Plutus rose up from bed with sight restored. 
I clapped my hands together with delight, 
And went to rouse my master. Instantly 
Both god and serpents vanished in the shrine. 
You can't imagine how the patients there 
Kept on embracing Plutus. They sat up 
The livelong night until the day had dawned ; 
Whilst loud I sang the praises of the god 
Who had so swiftly made our Plutus see 
And Neoclides blinder than before. 



ON THE SOUTH SIDE OF THE HILL 165 

Moving westward on slightly higher ground there is 
another portico and a row of chambers behind which are 
paved with small round pebbles. These are probably the 
priests' chambers. To the south of these again there is a 
polygonal wall, one stone of which bears the inscription 
HOPOS KPENES— the boundary of the fountain. It 
marks the limits of the ancient precinct and also indi- 
cates that the cult of the spring may really be older than 
the cult of the god. 

Asklepios is in Athens one of the new-comers whose 
worship seems to have been introduced towards the end 
of the fifth century. The scientific men of the day looked 
coldly on him and scoffed at the solemn cant of pet 
snakes and nocturnal apparitions. In time, however, 
they came to realize that his methods suited the needs of 
certain leisured classes of society, and the two schools 
of medicine worked together in the same kind of har- 
mony as sometimes exists to-day between the family 
doctor and the professor of mental therapeutics. 

An interesting suggestion has recently been made,i 
which may account for this change of attitude on the 
part of the followers of Hippocrates to their fellow- 
practitioners, the followers of Asklepios. It seems prob- 
able that the decline of Athens during the fourth and 
succeeding centuries was, among other causes, due to the 
invasion of malaria. At all events it is clear from the 
" Wasps " that fever was already prevalent in the time of 
Aristophanes, though it is hardly mentioned before. In 
malaria the orthodox practitioners found a foe against 
which they were powerless. Quinine was unknown to 
them and without quinine science was of little use. On 
the other hand the faith-healing methods of Asklepios 
gave the patient that mental stimulus which is un- 
doubtedly beneficial, and it seems possible that some of 
the cures were of intermittent fever in its early stages. 
' W. H. S. Jones, " Malaria and Greek History." 



166 DAYS IN ATTICA 

In the National Museum at Athens there are numerous 
stone tablets which had been set up by grateful patients 
in this precinct of Asklepios. The god, figured as a 
bearded man, appears on many of them, and he is usually 
accompanied by his daughter Hygiea and his snake. 
Sometimes the snake is shown without the god. The 
patient is often seated or reclining, and is represented as 
smaller than the healer. Sometimes a whole family is 
giving thanks and Asklepios also may be accompanied 
by a group of other divinities or priestly healers. . 

One relief, found in the cellar of a house at a little 
distance but probably belonging to this sanctuary, often 
attracts the attention of visitors to the museum. It is a 
long narrow stele with the figure of a snake curling 
upwards. At the head of the stele where the stone 
slightly widens is the sole of a sandal with the figure 
of a man engraved upon it. The sandal is quite realistic 
in representation, and the holes through which the straps 
would have passed are marked by deep cuttings. The 
figure is evidently the worshipping portrait of the donor, 
Silon. It remains open to conjecture whether he chose 
the sandal to show that he had come as a pilgrim 
from afar or to indicate J:hat he had been cured of some 
disease in the feet. Another theory is that the donor had 
been saved by the sole of his sandal from the bite of 
a poisonous snake. 

These and many other such stelae may be studied in 
the Hall of Votive Reliefs in the National Museum. The 
site of the Asklepieum was afterwards built over. The 
Byzantine church which stood here has been removed, 
but this part of the hill is still rich in Byzantine remains. 
There are fragments of some really beautiful lintels and 
slabs. It is delightful to spend an afternoon among them 
with camera or pencil. 



CHAPTER VII 

THE AFTERGLOW: ATHENS UNDER 
THE ROMANS 

I 

PAUSANIAS IN THE PIR^US 

IN fellowship with Theseus we first traversed the land 
approach to Athens. The sea route suggests another 
companion, dear garrulous Pausanias. As a travel- 
ling companion Pausanias is unrivalled. His knowledge 
of the antiquities and mythology of Greece gives him 
a fund of anecdote, while he is never too hurried to 
pause to read an inscription or to pick up crumbs of 
folk-lore from a passing native. When Pausanias visited 
Athens about i6o A.D. she was at the height of her out- 
ward splendour, though her political greatness was past. 
The buildings of the great Periclean age were still 
standing : to them had been added the colonnades and 
monuments given by members of the friendly Pergamene 
dynasty. Hadrian and Herodes Atticus were building on 
a larger and more elaborate scale than anything that had 
gone before. The great public works of these Romans 
had not all been completed, and since the interest of 
Pausanias was chiefly archaeological, he passed lightly 
over all that which was to him mere modern architecture. 
He does not pretend to describe what were in his day 

167 



168 DAYS IN ATTICA 

the " modern " buildings, but he occasionally mentions 
one or other while walking through the ancient town. 

With Pausanias therefore we stand at the ship's prow 
moving swiftly towards Athens. We pass under the 
white columns of Poseidon's temple perched on the 
cliff at Sunium. Only a few years previously these 
heights had been seized by Attic slaves employed in the 
silver mines at Laurium. Pausanias points out the 
Laurium mines, but he does not allude to the strike — 
or rebellion as he would have termed it. This was still 
too recent history to be of much interest to him. 

And now rounding the promontory of Cape Colonna, 
at last the features of the Athenian landscape detach 
themselves from the background of surrounding hills. 

At first the Cephissian Plain is barred by Hymettus. 
Then as we round the shoulder of Hymettus the plain 
comes into view with Parnes on the left, while scarred 
Pentelicus closes the view behind. 

And now the town itself glimmers in the distance, 
a mere indistinct whiteness among the broken lights and 
shadows of the plain. Then the craggy peak of Lyca- 
bettus becomes visible and from this point of view almost 
dwarfs the Acropolis, which rises immediately beneath it, 
no frowning sentinel hill, but a mere touch of brightness 
dominated by the higher crag. This is only the first 
impression. In Athens itself the Acropolis holds its 
own, and Lycabettus is banished to the background. 
In front of the town lies the open bay of Phalerum, and 
Pausanias reminds us how from this sloping beach 
Menestheus launched his ships for Troy. Now our boat 
rounds the rocky promontory of Munychia, revealing the 
natural advantages afforded by the double peninsula, with 
its fortified heights, the two almost land-locked harbours 
of Munychia and Zea, and the great sheltered inner 
harbour. This inner harbour was itself double, con- 
taining the military harbour of Cantharus and the 



THE AFTERGLOW 169 

commercial harbour, the Piraeus proper. Pausanias 
applauds the strategic insight of Themistocles, who saw 
that these advantages must at all costs be secured to 
the city. Finding it useless to try to persuade the 
Athenians to forsake their old dwellings and emigrate 
from Athens to the sea, he contented himself with 
fortifying the harbour and having the new town laid 
out on broad lines with open spaces and colonnades 
to attract those whom he could not coerce. Later the 
Athenians themselves built the long walls, thus, as it 
were, tying Athens and Piraeus together, and making 
of the two a curious dumb-bell shaped city, a device 
which proved as unsatisfactory as compromises usually 
are. 

The fortifications of Themistocles encircled the new 
town of Piraeus and ran across the peninsula of 
Munychia, and at need could even shut the sea door. 
In the days of Pausanias the three harbour mouths were 
still guarded by strong moles finished with towers, and 
in time of war these towers could be connected by strong 
chains, thus entirely closing the harbour mouth. Later 
another fortification wall was built, following the line of 
the rocky coast. In the harbours of Munychia and Zea 
we catch a glimpse of the great ship-sheds lining the 
shore. Here the triremes were housed. Each shed was 
fifty or sixty feet in length, with a wooden roof resting 
on plain stone pillars. The high polygonal wall which 
formed the back of the building made, as it were, a 
secondary line of shore fortifications. 

Remains of these sheds are still plainly visible in the 
harbours of Zea and Munychia. Excavations made in 
1885 by the Greek Archaeological Society show that in 
each shed a central pier of rock or masonry sloped down 
from the back wall to some distance under the sea, and 
was grooved in order to allow the vessel's keel to run 
along it. On either side the natural rock was cut away 



170 DAYS IN ATTICA 

in sloping lines down to the water, thus making a kind 
of natural support for the sides of the ship, 

Passing the promontory of Acte, Pausanias points out 
the tomb of Themistocles, on a headland of rock, between 
the city he created and the sea he loved. Here Pau- 
sanias' galley would furl its sails and slowly row between 
the moles of the great harbour. By this time the lines of 
buildings in Piraeus would be clearly visible ; the fine 
rectangular plan of the city as it was laid out by 
Hippodamus, with three main routes running parallel to 
each other and connected by four cross streets, the 
midmost street of the three prolonged and merging in the 
road that leads to Athens between the long walls. 

In the town were two large squares, and from the sea 
Pausanias would get a view of the stretch of white 
public buildings, throwing the reflections of their marble 
columns among the golden tints of the sailing craft which 
lay at anchor round the shore. First there were the long 
lines of the colonnades belonging to the granary and 
market-place, filled with a motley throng of merchants 
and sailors, a throng such as Euripides had in mind when 
he wrote for the chorus in Hippolytus : — 

Hath there landed amid the loud 
Hum of Piraeus sailor-crowd 
Some Cretan venturer weary-browed 
Who beareth the queen some tiding ? 

Behind the colonnades rose the magnificent arsenal built 
about the same time as the ship-sheds (347-29 B.C.) and 
conceived in the same spirit. It was a long, narrow 
building, 400 feet long by 50 feet wide ; the roof supported 
by two rows of columns which divide the building into 
three compartments. The central aisle was left clear for 
the passage of men and the handling of goods. The side 
aisles were divided into two stories ; canvas, oars, and 
heavy fittings were stored below, the lighter ropes and 
tackle above. 



THE AFTERGLOW 171 

No remains of this building can be seen to-day, but an 
inscription found in 1882 at the port of Munychia gives 
most precise details as to its construction. 

Standing out among the Imes of the low dwelling- 
houses, there rose the great temple to the ^^ Saviour 
Zeus and Saviour Athena," where the pious sailor offered 
thanks for his safe return. On the right, on the heights 
of Munychia, was another temple sacred to *^ Munychian 
Artemis " ; a smaller sanctuary to Aphrodite stood at the 
head of the little harbour of Cantharus (now marked by 
the custom-house), and somewhere on the northern side 
of the great harbour was another temple to the same sea- 
born goddess. With its five colonnades surrounding the 
water's edge, with the arsenal, the ship-sheds, the stately 
temples, and two theatres, this great harbour-city of the 
Piraeus bade fair to outshine her Mediterranean rivals 
even in the days of Pausanias. 

On disembarking, Pausanias did not follow the main 
street which led direct to Athens between the lines of 
the long walls, for this road would be uncomfortably 
crowded. There was no view, the roads were rutted and 
dirty, and the foot passenger was often in danger of 
finding himself squeezed against the wall in order to 
avoid the laden wagons passing up and down from the 
port. Pausanias therefore chose the more open road, 
and struck away to the left, entering Athens through the 
tombs outside the Dipylum Gate. 



II 

THE ROMAN TOWN 

Roman Athens compared ill with the broad, geometrical 
streets of the Piraeus. "The streets are nothing but 
miserable old lanes, the houses mean, with a few better 



172 DAYS IN ATTICA 

ones among them/' so wrote a traveller who visited Athens 
in the first century B.C., and even in the time of 
Pausanias the same description held good, though the 
Romans had done their best to remedy the town's most 
obvious defects. 

The aqueduct, begun by Hadrian and finished by his 
successor, brought fresh water from Pentelicus to Athens. 
It follows the same line as the modern one, starting 
near Cephissia and ending on the south-west slope of 
Lycabettus. In the course of ages the ancient aqueduct 
was freely tapped by those whose gardens lay along the 
line of its route, and the morality of the twentieth 
century is not always proof against the same temptation. 
The ancient cistern, which was no doubt open, occupied 
the same site above the city as the modern one, which 
is fortunately covered. It stands on a shady platform 
high above the town, with a view of the Acropolis, 
-^gina, and the mountains of the Peloponnese. Here 
the townspeople still crowd on the Feast of the Epiphany 
to see the Archbishop in full canonicals bless the water 
and throw upon it the holy cross. 

The Romans also gave Athens a new market-place, 
more spacious and less straggling than its predecessor. 
It lies further east of the Acropolis than did the old 
market. In fact the whole current of city life seems in 
Roman times to have set eastward, and the new suburb 
of Hadrian lay over towards the Ilissus. This change 
of fashion leading the business and pleasure of the town 
from one district to another is the feature that dis- 
tinguishes our Western towns from those of the un- 
changing Orient. In Western towns when the old 
quarters become cramped or out of fashion, new dealers 
set up their shops in conspicuous spots on the out- 
skirts of the old centres, and the stream of trade is slowly 
diverted from its course. In Eastern towns the process 
is reversed, and it is the neighbourhood of the oldest 



THE AFTERGLOW 173 

rather than of the newest dealer that is most sought 
after. In Roman times Athens belonged to the Western 
world. That touch of the East which hangs about her 
to-day does not date further back than her Turkish 
conquerors. It is strange to hear an Athenian now talk 
of '' going to Europe," tacitly assuming that he is in 
some sense an Asiatic. But this is a digression and has 
taken us from that prince of digressors, Pausanias himself. 

The new Roman market-place was entered on the 
west by a large gateway, of which four Doric columns 
with architrave and pediment are still in place. An in- 
scription on the architrave shows that the gate was 
dedicated to Athena Archegetis (Athena the Foundress), 
while a second inscription, which has now vanished, 
showed that the building dated from the middle of the 
first century B.C. At a distance of about six feet inside 
these columns, there was a wall containing the gates to 
which this large structure was a portico. There would 
probably be a large gate for wheeled vehicles opposite 
the wide space between the columns with smaller postern 
gates on either side. Remains of one of these posterns 
may still be seen at the south corner, where a complete 
anta still supports the architrave, and opposite to it is the 
upright jamb of a door. Here there is a long inscription 
bearing the name of the Emperor Hadrian. It gives the 
regulations for the sale of oil in the market-place. 

At the eastern end of the market-place another gate has 
been found. This is not placed in an exact line with the 
gate of the Foundress Athena, but lies somewhat to the 
south. From this it has been assumed that the market- 
place had more than one gate at either end. We may 
picture a large open court, paved with flags and sur- 
rounded by an Ionic colonnade ; warehouses and shops 
behind. Remains of these shops and stores can still be 
seen on the wall that bounds the market-place to the 
east. Even the names of the merchants have survived 



174 DAYS IN ATTICA 

cut on the columns or on the pavement before their 
doors. Four holes of different sizes sunk in the floor of 
this pavement are clearly the measures of capacity used 
by the merchants. Two columns on either side of these 
holes have the linear measure carefully graved upon them. 
Here we have the Greek tttj^j^vc, which was originally 
measured from the elbow to the first joints of the fingers, 
and which is still the standard measure in use through- 
out Greece. 

Explorers of some future age excavating the remains 
of Piccadilly Circus may similarly find the names of 
great merchants over their doors and the yard measure 
marked on the counter. It is true that the Roman shops 
were mere sheds compared with London's palatial stores, 
yet in its own day the Roman market had a repu- 
tation for architectural distinction. Its spaciousness 
and regularity of outline was a great improvement on 
the old haphazard Athenian agora. 

Overlooking the market and immediately outside of 
it stands the Clock Tower of Andronicus, famous as the 
*' Tower of the Winds." The octagonal marble tower, 
with its roof of the same material gently sloping up to 
the centre, pleasantly closes the perspective of the long 
modern street that now leads up to it, but on a closer 
view the detail is disappointing. Heavy limbs and life- 
less draperies fill the panels of the frieze in a clumsy 
attempt to make the human figure conform to the lines 
of a festoon. Had the frieze been filled with simple 
perpendicular lines of fluting, had it even been left bare, 
the building would have gained a dignity that is now 
lacking. Nor can the beauty of the building have been 
enhanced by the ingenious figure of a bronze Triton, 
who acted as weathercock on the tower and pointed 
with his stick to the figure facing the quarter from which 
the wind was blowing. But though their absence might 
improve the appearance of the tower, I doubt if there is 



THE AFTERGLOW 175 

any lover of Athens who could wish away these quaint 
personifications of the winds in the frieze. They seem 
for so many centuries to have linked the dwellers in the 
wind-swept city into one bond of brotherhood. The 
winds that haunt the poems and legends of ancient 
Greece are still vivid realities to the modern Athenian, 
and the attributes on the tower represent correctly 
enough their latter-day reputations. 

First come the three winter winds, Skiron, Boreas, and 
Kaikias. Skiron bears a brazier for cold days. He is the 
North West Wind. Boreas, who faces ^olus Street, is 
clad in thick garments and blows a horn. He is the 
strong North Wind who sweeps noisily down through 
the pass of Deceleia and comes to Athens from the snowy 
hill-tops of Euboea. He brings the cold, clear days char- 
acteristic of the Athenian winter, and the deceitful blue 
of his skies has tempted out many a victim since the 
days of Oreithyia. Simonides sings : *^ The North Wind 
rushing from Thrace covered the flanks of Olympus with 
snow and nipped the spirits of thinly-clad men." But 
Boreas has his kindly as well as his dangerous aspect. 
In the time of the Persian War, " It is said that the 
Athenians had called upon Boreas to aid the Greeks, on 
account of a fresh oracle which they had received, order- 
ing them to ask help from their son-in-law. For Boreas, 
according to Greek tradition, had married a woman of 
Attica — i.e, Oreithya, daughter of Erechtheus," and there- 
fore might be counted a son-in-law of Athens. Poets and 
painters show him sweeping his bride away as she 
gathers the spring flowers. 

Modern Athenians may have forgotten to claim kin- 
ship with Boreas, but they have not forgotten to look to 
him as their deliverer. He is the health wind, the 
germ-destroyer, the invigorator. During an epidemic 
of smallpox we saw the picture of St. Barbara carried 
in full procession round the outskirts of the city on 



176 DAYS IN ATTICA 

St. Barbara's day, and when on the morrow a strong 
north wind sprang up, we heard a devout Greek exclaim, 
'^ Praise the Lord, St. Barbara has sent Boreas to 
help us." 

The North East Wind, Kaikias, is the evil genius of the 
Athenian climate. He is the " pneumonia wind," and 
his voice tells of the frozen tracts of Siberia over which 
he passed long before he rushed through the gap in the 
hills between Hymettus and Pentelicus. He holds a 
dish of pellets which have variously been called olives or 
hailstones. The first interpretation is the older one, but 
the last seems the more probable. Apeliotes, the East 
Wind, comes next. He is the wind of spring, bringing 
fruit and flowers. Euros, the South East Wind, carries 
the storm up from Hymettus, wrapping it in clouds as 
his own arm is wrapped in drapery. There is an Italian 
proverb prophesying rain " when the Madman puts on 
his cap. Monte Matto is the Italian corruption of 
Hymettus, and this becomes in familiar speech ^^11 Matto" 
(The Madman). The cap is the sullen bar of cloud 
hiding the peak. The South Wind, NotoSy seems in 
Roman times to have had a rainy reputation. To-day 
he is less of a rain wind than Euros his companion, and 
the two might well exchange the emblems of cloak and 
water-jar. Notos to-day often brings clouded skies and 
an atmosphere heavy with desert dust. Next comes Lips, 
the sailors' wind, with the prow of a ship as his emblem, 
and after him the bountiful Zephyros with flowers. The 
two winds are both beloved of poets. Leonidas of 
Tarentum mingles their attributes in one short song : 
^^ Now is the season of sailing ; for already the chattering 
swallow is come, and the gracious West Wind ; the 
meadows flower, and the sea tossed up with waves and 
rough blasts has sunk to silence. Weigh thine anchors 
and unloose thine hawsers, oh mariner ! and sail with all 
thy canvas set : this I, Priapus of the harbour, bid thee, 



THE AFTERGLOW 177 

oh man ! that thou mayest sail forth to all thy 
trafficking." 

On each face of the tower, as well as the figure of the 
wind, there was also a sundial. Inside was the cele- 
brated water clock of Andronicus. Its mechanism has 
never been fully explained. The water that worked it 
was brought from the spring Clepsydra by means of an 
aqueduct, the remains of which may still be seen. Its 
value in that busy market-place is self-evident. Before it 
was placed there, there must have been many cloudy 
days when the citizens measured the flight of time chiefly 
by their appetites. We saw in the last chapter how 
Dioclides, having no clock, mistook moonlight for 
dawn, and found himself roaming at night in the neigh- 
bourhood of the Dionysiac Theatre. 

A few paces from the Clock Tower is the famous 
Library of Hadrian. Its north portico or stoa, now 
facing on to the little Bazaar behind Hermes Street, has 
long been a conspicuous object, yet it is only within 
quite recent years that archaeologists have ventured to 
exchange the well-known non-committal name, '' Stoa of 
Hadrian," for the more definite term now employed. In 
1886 the site was excavated by the Greek Archaeological 
Society, revealing a ground-plan much complicated by 
later Byzantine buildings. Around the open court 
remains were found of a portico of a hundred columns. 
This was, however, an incomplete clue to its identifica- 
tion, since Pausanias mentions that Hadrian gave both 
his Gymnasium and his Library one hundred columns. 
Very few gymnasia of this period are known, and until 
1905 there was no library with which Hadrian's building 
could be compared. In that year, however, the Austrian 
excavations at Ephesus laid bare the remains of a Roman 
library to which this building bears so strong a general 
resemblance that there is no longer room for doubt that 
this is indeed Hadrian's Library, thus vindicating the 



178 DAYS IN ATTICA 

conclusion at which Mr. Frazer and other archaeologists 
had already arrived on independent grounds. 

The whole ground-plan of Hadrian's Library has [not 
yet been uncovered, but thanks to the description of 
Pausanius, it is possible to identify the large central hall 
in which under a gilded roof the books were stored and 
around it an open courtyard enclosed by the famous 
colonnade. The interior of the building is reached from 
the upper end of ^olus Street. It is fenced in by iron 
railings, and, contrary to the usual custom of the Greek 
Archaeological Society, the gate into the enclosure is 
locked. There are, however, twenty small boys always 
ready to run for the key, and on passing in one finds a 
high wall of dark poros stone. This seems to be the out- 
side wall of a row of five chambers outside the colonnade, 
but following the same lines. On the right there is some 
plain masonry which seems to have formed the back wall 
of the stoa, and in front is a marble wall of good Roman 
work which formed the north-eastern corner of the 
original hall and was retained as the short wall of a 
northern transept when the Christians built their church 
there. To see the front of the building one must pass to 
the old bazaar at the foot of Athena Street, where the 
Corinthian columns rise oddly from the scene of oriental 
confusion below. These columns, which still bear the 
name " Stoa of Hadrian," are all that is left in the west 
front of the Library. The two standing more in advance 
of the others are the two from the north side of the porch. 
The seven in a row beyond form the northern half of 
the western wall. These are plain, while those of the 
porch are fluted. All carry Corinthian capitals. Founda- 
tions still remain of the bases of the three columns which 
completed the front of the portico and also of the seven 
bases of the columns on the south side of the porch 
answering to those still standing on the north. The 
original building had therefore a fa9ade with a row of 



PLA'J-E J 'HI 




_ JKt i»;'***<<^-*— 



HADRIAN'S LIBRARY IN TURKISH TIMES 




HADRIAN'S LIBRARY AS IT IS TO-DAY 



THE AFTERGLOW 179 

fourteen columns and a porch with a front of seven 
columns. 

The love of these large open porticoes is as charac- 
teristic of Athenian life in the Roman as in the Hellenistic 
age. For the ruler who wished to gain popularity there 
was no surer way to the hearts of the citizens than the gift 
of a new public colonnade. At the time that Pausanias 
visited Athens the number of these colonnades was out 
of all proportion to the size of the town. The Hellenic 
porticoes were still standing. The Hellenistic or later 
Greek period had added those built by Eumenes and 
Attalus, and the Roman period gave the so-called Portico 
of the Giants, the portico of Hadrian's Library, and 
probably another outside his Gymnasium. There was 
therefore no quarter of the town without its sunny 
promenade sheltered from the weather and dry underfoot. 
Of these porticoes or stoce there were always two 
distinct types ; the first, such as the large one built by 
Attains, was a centre for business with shops at the back 
of the open colonnade and dwellings for the store- 
keepers above ; the second, such as that built by Eumenes, 
was an open promenade with no shops or dwellings 
attached. The one was the resort of buyers and sellers, 
the second the haunt of philosophers and beggars. In 
this matter our civilization still seems to lag behind the 
Greek and the Roman world. Our climate is far worse 
than theirs, yet Chester is almost the only town in the 
kingdom that protects its sidewalks from the sun and rain. 
Considering the colonnades in their chronological 
order, the Stoa of Eumenes comes first. It now runs from 
the Theatre of Dionysus to the Music Hall of Herodes ; 
in the days when it was built, however, there was no 
great Music Hall. The latter, though it added to the 
significance and usefulness of the broad double colonnade, 
must also have encroached on its western end. This 
colonnade was placed in a most popular spot. After the 



180 DAYS IN ATTICA 

« 

building of the Music Hall it formed a covered way from 
that building to the Theatre. It faced south, it was 
sheltered from the east and west, and from its south end 
it overlooked the Gulf of ^gina. Here the sun-loving 
Athenians came to take their morning or evening stroll, 
and here also the audience in the Dionysiac Theatre could 
hasten for shelter when a tragedy or cock-fight was 
interrupted by a sudden storm. To-day all that remains 
is a portion of pavement and sidewalk, foundations of 
columns and the arches of the back wall built against the 
hill. These arches that now seem the distinguishing 
feature of the Stoa of Eumenes, have only become visible 
since its destruction. Originally they were covered by a 
wall of which the lower half was marble and the upper 
half of limestone. Eumenes II, the giver of this portico, 
was King of Pergamon in the first half of the second 
century B.C. His father Attains I had already shown his 
friendship to Athens by presenting the town with a series 
of recumbent statues which lay on the South wall of the 
Acropolis above the Dionysiac Theatre. After the death 
of Eumenes his son Attalus II (159-38 B.C.) continued 
the family tradition and won the gratitude of the 
Athenians by giving them another portico. This was the 
well-known Stoa of Attalus, which stood in the heart of 
the city to the East of the Hellenic Agora. Its marble 
pavement, its two sidewalks, and the foundations of its 
colonnade may still be seen. It is also possible to make 
out something of the shops at the back of the colonnade. 
The lower and upper stories were connected by means of 
an open staircase in the South wall. The upper story also 
had a double line of columns answering to the colonnade 
below, with the addition of a balustrade of marble for the 
sake of safety. 

Westward of the Stoa of Attalus was another portico 
known as the Stoa of the Giants, which was built or 
rebuilt in Roman times. Four bases standing in a row 



I 



THE AFTERGLOW 181 

are surmounted by fragments of colossal figures from 
which the name has been given to it. Compared with 
the other porticoes, this is small and of little interest, 
worthy of notice only as adding one more type to 
the list of Athenian stoae. Pausanias as he strolled 
through Athens may have enjoyed the new colonnades. 
No doubt he often paused in their shade while noting his 
observations on pocket-tablets at the end of a morning's 
sightseeing. 

On the Acropolis itself there are remains of only one 
Roman building, the little temple to Rome and Augustus, 
which stands just outside the east side of the Parthenon. 
An inscription, which may still be seen on the broken 
fragments of the epistyle, tells us that this temple was 
set up by the people of Athens to the goddess Rome and 
to the god Caesar. It must have been a graceful little 
building with its round cella and the nine Ionic columns 
encircling it, but its blatantly servile inscription suggests 
too poignant a contrast between its own builders and 
those of the Parthenon on whose threshold it stands. 

These Roman buildings are all sufficiently Greek in 
style not to seem out of place in Athens. The Roman 
era has, however, left one trophy of aggressive ugliness. 
The Philopappus monument stands on the Mouseium 
Hill opposite the Acropolis. It has a splendid position 
and a special interest, for it was set up to the last 
recorded male descendant of the Seleucid dynasty. 
These kings of Asia Minor had been for many generations 
the representatives and champions of Hellenism in the 
Oriental world. The monument commemorates Philo- 
pappus in his triple character of Asiatic king, Roman 
consul, and Athenian citizen. The curved facade has 
two stories, and was probably placed at the end of 
an oblong hall. In the upper story were set three 
statues divided by Corinthian pilasters. Inscriptions 
show that the central statue represented Gains Julius 



182 DAYS IN ATTICA 

Philopappus with a royal Seleucid ancestor on either 
hand. The building is thus dated approximately to the 
year A.D. 115. In the lower story was a relief showing 
Philopappus as consul driving a car with four horses. 
When new it must have been even more unsightly than 
it is to-day — the *' Albert Memorial " of Athens. 

Ill 
HADRIAN'S NEW SUBURB 

At the foot of the fashionable modern boulevard called 
after the Queen Amalia there stands a somewhat purpose- 
less and not very beautiful yellow gateway known as the 
Arch of Hadrian. There is nothing remarkable in its 
architecture, history, or position. A shallow arch sup- 
ports a colonnade of four columns in late Corinthian 
style. It does not seem to have been a triumphal arch, 
though there is some reminiscence of the arches in the 
Roman Forum. The orientation shows that it could not 
have served as an entrance to the enclosure of the great 
temple behind. Probably it was erected merely to mark 
the site of an earlier gate when the town wall which once 
stood here was destroyed. Although it bears the name 
of Hadrian, it seems to date from a slightly later period. 
Driving along any Greek road to-day the traveller may 
see by the roadside many structures as pretentious and 
less forgivable than this — magnificent gateways holding 
no gate and unsupported by walls. For even if it has no 
beauty this so-called Arch of Hadrian has a real signifi- 
cance. It was put there to mark the boundary between 
the old town and the new. On the architrave words are 
carved. On the side towards the Acropolis, " This is 
Athens the. former city of Theseus^' and on the other side, 
" This is the city of Hadrian and not the city of Theseus." 

This arch therefore marked not only the passage from 



THE AFTERGLOW 183 

Hellenic to Roman Athens. It also in a certain sense 
recorded the entrance to a new period — the late afternoon 
of Athenian glory when the city was content to shine in 
reflected light and to flourish as the petted favourite of a 
great empire ; when the foreign ruler Hadrian was not 
afraid to challenge comparison with Theseus himself. 

In the eyes of its own generation, the city of Hadrian 
probably outshone its forerunner. The Roman buildings 
were planned on a more colossal scale, and the rapid 
succession of public works raised by Hadrian and Herodes 
Atticus dominated the imagination of the Athenians who 
by now were proud to call themselves Roman citizens. 
The glory of Rome would be increased by the remem- 
brance that these buildings were not, like those of the 
Acropolis, national achievements of a nation, but the 
mere caprice of an individual whose humour was so 
to adorn Athens, one of the many provincial capitals of 
his empire. Hadrian gave the city every kind of build- 
ing : temples, a library, a gymnasium, baths, and an 
aqueduct. He was rewarded by the adulation of all 
society : priests, philosophers, athletes, and idlers. Pau- 
sanias found the city overdone with statues of the great 
emperor. The space outside the Olympieum was, he 
says, completely filled with his image, " for every city 
presented a portrait-statue of the Emperor Hadrian, 
while the Athenians have overtopped all the rest by 
setting up the remarkable colossus behind the temple." 
He mentions also a statue near the entrance to the 
Parthenon and tells us that in the Agora there was 
another dedicated to him as " Hadrian the Liberator." 
This same title appears in the inscription on the chair 
reserved for his priest in the theatre, and it was well- 
deserved. Like other provinces of the Empire, Attica had 
been grossly overtaxed. Hadrian remitted her arrears 
of taxation and gave provincials equal legal rights with 
Roman citizens. 



184 DAYS IN ATTICA 

Greatest of all the works of Hadrian was the temple 
itself, the vast building to Olympian Zeus, in this new 
quarter. It stood well out of the town, in full view of 
the Acropolis and the sea, and with the well-watered 
groves of the Ilissus around it, and occupied a site 
which from earliest times had been marked out for a 
sanctuary. The emperor was in fact merely accom- 
plishing a work which had been conceived and partly 
executed at two, if not three, earlier periods. 

Tradition says that this was the spot chosen by 
Deucalion for a sanctuary dedicated to Zeus after the 
waters of the great flood had subsided. ^' Here there 
is an opening in the ground about a cubit wide, where 
they say that after the flood in the times of Deucalion 
the water ran away ; and every year there is thrown into 
it a cake of meal mixed with honey." 

Mr. Penrose, who excavated this site in 1885, thought 
he discovered traces of this temple in a rough wall of 
hard limestone below the foundations of the standing 
columns. Later authorities have, however, questioned 
this. 

The second temple on this spot dates from the time 
of Peisistratus, and though his dynasty was unable to 
complete the immense work that he had planned, some 
of the Doric columns remained standing through after 
centuries. A few drums of poros stone are all that 
to-day remain of this sixth-century temple of Peisistratus. 
They are easily distinguishable from the larger marble 
drums of Hadrian's time. Between this building and 
that of Hadrian a third attempt was made to finish the 
temple. In the second century B.C. the Syrian Antiochus 
Epiphanes began to build here. His architect was a 
Roman named Cossutius, and the temple was to have 
been in the Corinthian style. Sulla carried off some of 
its columns to adorn the Capitoline temple at Rome. 
Mr. Penrose has guessed that these must have been the 



THE AFTERGLOW 185 

marble monoliths of the inner temple, as it would have 
been impossible to remove the outer columns without 
damaging their delicate flutings. About A.D. 130 Hadrian 
brought the long-interrupted work to completion. When 
finished it was one of the largest Greek temples in the 
world, measuring 354 feet in length and 135 feet in 
breadth along the upper step. On the narrow ends (east 
and west) it had a triple row of eight Corinthian 
columns, while the sides facing north and south had 
a double row of twenty. The group now to be seen are 
those belonging to the south-east angle of the temple, 
while the isolated couple belong to the inner row of the 
south side. 

It is not easy for a building of such colossal pro- 
portions to gain its true effect. It must be balanced by 
a spacious sweep of ground below, and spectators must 
be able to stand at a distance to take in the whole at a 
glance. Hadrian therefore enlarged the natural platform 
on which the temple stood, carrying it as far as the 
borders of the Ilissus, where it was supported by a 
retaining wall, parts of which are still visible. 

This district round the Ilissus which had once seemed 
so lonely that the Athenian women feared to draw water 
from the spring, now became the popular quarter of the 
city. To-day, in the gardens of the Royal Palace, or 
among the oleanders of the newly-planted Zappeion 
garden, we come unawares upon mosaic pavements and 
low walls, the remains of the many baths and villas 
which sprang up in this district during the Roman 
occupation. Then, as now, the happy Athenians came 
here to spend the afternoons of early summer. Then, 
as now, the purple of -^gina and the fainter mauve of 
Troezen shone jewel-like behind the temple, while the 
pervading blue of sea and sky made then a rare back- 
ground for those honorary statues to the emperor of 
which Pausanias speaks. Here the loungers sat and 



186 DAYS IN ATTICA 

gazed at the glories of the great temple, perfect at last, 
after centuries of incompletion. Perhaps they told 
each other of the three attempts to finish the building, 
praising Hadrian for its final success. One almost hears 
the muttered comments of the saturnine philosopher 
sitting by himself in a corner, who grumbles that the 
work of one tyrant has been completed by another, and 
that Hadrian's velvet glove has subverted the liberties of 
the Athenian people more effectually than the dynasty of 
Peisistratus. 

Hadrian's lead was soon followed by a private citizen, 
H erodes Atticus, who at the time of Pausanias' visit was 
still beautifying the new suburb of the city. Elated by 
his own victory in the Panathenaic games, he promised 
his countrymen that their next contest should be held in 
a marble building. He kept his word, and at the end 
of the four years the old stadium on the further side of 
the Ilissus was nearly doubled in size and was com- 
pletely overlaid with marble. Its length was now 
670 feet, its breadth 109 feet. The tiers of marble 
benches rising one above the other were able to seat 
over fifty thousand spectators. Its entrance was at the 
end nearest the city, and excavations made in 1904 have 
revealed the foundations of splendid Propylaea. A Herm 
which originally stood at the winning-post has also been 
discovered, and stands once more in the stadium. The 
old starting-point seems to have been at the end of the 
building nearest the town and slightly outside the last 
of the spectators' seats, an arrangement peculiar to this 
stadium. A temple to Fortune on one of the low hills 
overlooking the stadium and a marble bridge across the 
Ilissus seem to have been gifts from the same generous 
hand. No traces of the temple or bridge have yet been 
found, though both are described by travellers in the 
eighteenth century. The obvious signs of lime-kilns on 
the low hills show only too clearly the reason for the 



THE AFTERGLOW 187 

rapid disappearance of marble from this region. There 
can be httle doubt that for many centuries the manu- 
facture of Hme has been carried on in Athens at the 
expense of her ancient buildings. The district is full of 
limestone, but as long as marble remained on the surface 
it was easier to obtain lime from this than to quarry it 
from the hill-side. After many centuries of desolation, a 
private individual once more volunteered to cover the 
stadium with marble, and the new building now glistens 
as freshly for our generation as in the days when 
Pausanias saw it. The Olympian games are also being 
revived, and this southern suburb of the city is as popular 
in the days of the new kingdom as it was when favoured 
by emperor and philosopher. 

One other building was set up by Herodes Atticus. 
This was the great Odeum or Music Hall, which he gave 
to the Athenian people in memory of his wife Regilla. 
Set close under the south side of the Acropolis, it is still 
a striking piece of architecture with its three tiers of 
arches, and owing to its sheltered position it has suffered 
less than the other ancient monuments of Athens. 
Herodes, who loved to do all things lavishly, gave to 
his concert hall a cedar roof, which soon became famous. 
There was a mosaic floor and the seats were of marble. 
The buildings show the personality of this magnificent 
philosopher-citizen ; proud of his city, proud of his 
own accomplishments, a man of culture and refinement, 
and not untainted by the love of display that was already 
undermining the spirit of the Roman Empire. We know 
him also as an affectionate husband and a kind patron. 
We have a glimpse of him in his country house at 
Cephissia (p. 332), with the little group of students and 
poets that he had gathered round him. To the end of 
his days that sweet moment of victory in the stadium 
seems to have remained the great memory of his life, and 
it was by the stadium that he desired to be buried. In 



188 DAYS IN ATTICA 

January, 1904, a tomb was opened on the little hill east 
of the stadium. It was naturally suggested that this tomb 
might be that of H erodes. Unfortunately, however, the 
grave had been plundered and no direct evidence was ob- 
tainable beyond the fact that the plain marble sarcophagus 
seems by its workmanship to belong to his century. 

IV 
A ROMAN CARGO 

Popular though Athens was among the Romans, their 
feeling for her did not deter them from carrying off a 
goodly harvest of marble and bronze to adorn their own 
homes in Italy. The Roman museums to-day are full of 
treasures captured in true Morosini-Elgin fashion. Thus 
a taste for such things was created, and to meet it there 
grew up in Athens a school of sculptors who turned out 
clever copies of older work, not forgeries, but reminis- 
cences of Archaic, Hellenic, and Hellenistic types. In 
the same way the Athenian craftsman to-day models 
charming figurines breathing the very spirit of the old 
Tanagra terra-cottas. 

These facts have been emphasized within recent years 
by the discovery of two Roman vessels with their cargoes 
of statuary found by divers on the sea-bottom. One of 
these was wrecked on the coast of Carthage. Its con- 
tents, which are slowly being brought to the surface, are 
now housed in the Museum at Tunis. The other wreck, 
accidentally discovered in 1900 by sponge-fishers off the 
Island of Anticythera (Cerigotto), has yielded a few 
marbles and a rich store of bronzes for the National 
Museum at Athens. When first these fragments were 
brought to the Museum they were in a pitiful condition. 
To visit them in the Mending Room or ranged under the 
long portico outside the Museum was to be reminded 



PL A TE IX 



f i 




BRONZE STATUK FROM ANTICYTHERA 



THE AFTERGLOW 189 

of a leper hospital. Such portions as had been buried 
in the sand were in fairly good preservation, but the 
parts that had remained exposed were corroded by the 
action of the sea and in some cases had been entirely 
destroyed. The magnificent bronze Hermes that now 
confronts us at the end of the sculpture gallery was 
found shattered in a dozen pieces. 

The work of restoration was most difficult, but it has 
been carried out with great care and great success by 
M. Cavvadias, late Ephor-General of Antiquities, and his 
colleague, M. Sta'is. The shipwrecked mariners fished 
up from the bottom of the sea are now one of the most 
interesting features of the Museum. Where possible, 
missing parts have been renewed, but when there was 
no indication as to the shape of a missing limb no 
attempt has been made to hide the mutilation. 

When first the Hermes was being put together his 
eager, compelling gaze, outstretched arm, and graceful 
poise suggested the hope that he might prove to be a 
masterpiece of the fifth or fourth century. But the 
critics stepped in, and we are now told that this is but 
another copy for the Roman market, no doubt inspired 
by recollections of Praxiteles and his Olympian Hermes. 
The name Hermes for this bronze statue is, of course, 
quite arbitrary. He has also been identified as Paris with 
the apple and Perseus with the head of Medusa. 

Another fragment in this collection, a work of extra- 
ordinary interest and charm, is the bronze head of an 
oldish man, rugged and thought-worn. When first 
found the metal had oxidized and corroded, so that 
the features were coarsened and the head seemed flat 
and shapeless, and accordingly it was then known as the 
Head of a Boxer. Careful cleaning and restoration have 
entirely changed its character, and it is now known as 
the Head of a Philosopher. The shaggy hair, deep 
eye-sockets, and furrowed brow make a haunting bit of 



190 DAYS IN ATTICA 

portraiture. The eyes that for twenty centuries gazed 
on the strange world of the sea-bottom still gaze at us, 
not satisfied for all their curious knowledge, showing 
still the hungry glance of the seeker. 

Utterly different in spirit, though charming enough in 
Its own way, is "The Crouching Boy," a life-size figure 
m vemed grey marble with no pretension to rank as a 
first-class work. The pose is unusual and has not yet 
been satisfactorily explained. The boy crouches on the 
right knee, his left arm upraised. The gentle, playful 
expression on his face suggests a game of hide-and-seek 
or mimic warfare rather than any kind of struggle. He 
might be stooping to gather an arrow or mark the length 
of a shot, holding his hand up to warn a companion. 
This statue and other marble fragments have the marble 
supports which are usually chiselled away, still left in 
place, a proof that they are fresh from the workshop, 
not "wrenched from their pedestals." 

Two bronze statuettes confirm this same impression. 
They are the work of artists who were inspired by the 
traditions of pure Greek art, but who worked with an eye 
to the Roman market. The sculptor knew that his work 
was not intended to awake any religious sentiment. It 
was to be one among many objects of art in the home of 
a cultivated Roman citizen and its Attic flavour was to 
attract the attention of connoisseurs. Mr. Frost, in his 
discussion of these statues,^ points out that if this is the 
case it is no longer possible to identify this wreck off the 
island of Anticythera with that vessel of Sulla's which 
Lucian mentions as having sailed from Pir^us carrying 
one of the most famous pictures by Zeuxis and having 
been shipwrecked somewhere off Cape Malea. A con- 
queror with the spoils of a conquered city under his 
hand would not be likely to go to the ateliers of the 
craftsmen for his trophies. 

'■ Hellenic Journaly 1903. 



PLATE X 




MARRI.E STATUK FROM AXTICVTHKRA 



THE AFTERGLOW 191 

This cargo therefore was composed, not of excep- 
tional works of art, but of the average production of 
Athenian craftsmen in Roman times. And yet how 
beautiful they are ! lacking no doubt in perfect harmony 
of line and precision of detail, but still full of the old 
grace. The afterglow of Greek glory was slow to fade. 



CHAPTER VIII 

THE BYZANTINE CHURCHES 
OF ATTICA 

ONE of the most charming features of Attica is 
the number of Byzantine churches appearing 
in odd unexpected places. At the end of a 
fashionable street, in the middle of a modern square, 
next door to a railway-station, under the shadow of the 
Acropolis Hill, in any place and at any time one may 
come upon one of these tiny golden buildings (a harmony 
of soft colours and dark tiled domes), its foundations sunk 
some feet beneath the level of the modern road. It is 
the same in the country districts. A fold in the barren 
hill-side discloses the site of some rich old monastery 
with its vaulted church : sometimes even without any 
monastery on an open moor or windy hill-top there 
stands a deserted church, its frescoes green with 
mould. 

The churches of Attica fall naturally into two distinct 
groups : the larger ones which are more or less quadri- 
lateral, belong to the basilica type. The smaller and 
more numerous churches, built in the shape of a 
cross, are known as the cruciform type. In these the 
nave, chancel, and transepts are higher than the 
other parts of the building, and give the appearance of 
a Latin cross. Sometimes the length of the transepts 

193 



PL A TE XI 




CHURCH OF THE SAINTS THEODORE. ATHENS 




MONASTERY CHURCH OF DAPHNI 



THE BYZANTINE CHURCHES OF ATTICA 193 

north and south corresponds to the length of the church 
east and west, thus retaining the proportions of the 
greek cross. Each of these arms is usually finished by 
a tiled cupola, and over the centre of the church, where 
the arms meet, a large cupola is raised on a higher drum, 
giving it a marked predominance. The rectangular 
spaces between the arms and the body of the church 
are often filled in by vaults or apses. Such a church 
becomes a group of swelling curves which lead the eye 
upward to the central dome that rests on its slender 
drum. 

In the basilica group the cross transepts are not in- 
dicated by difference in roof-level. The central space is 
surmounted by a single dome of rather wide proportions. 
This rests on a low drum that does not rise much above 
the level of the roof. The narthex, which was originally 
the porch for the reception of those not yet admitted 
to church-membership, is now an extension of the nave. 
The effect of these churches is less slender and graceful 
than those of the cruciform group. Their massive 
proportions make them suitable for more important 
buildings, such as the large monasteries of Daphni 
and Daou. The illustration (Plate lo) gives the con- 
trast between the two types. 

As regards ornament no two churches are alike. The 
same motives are found but their application is different 
in each case. The church at Daphni was the only one 
wealthy enough to cover its interior wall surface with 
mosaic designs, and nothing can compare with the rich 
haphazard collection of sculpture in the outside walls of 
the old Metropolis Church at Athens. Yet among the 
smaller churches each has its own piece of special 
decoration, fresco or carving or brickwork, just as each 
part of the church had its own particular fragment of 
dogma or sacred history assigned to it. The walls are 
generally made of yellow stone, ornamented with red 



194 DAYS IN ATTICA 

bricks, and the domes are covered with dark tiles. The 
bricks were often placed so as to form the sacred 
initials of Christ's name, as is seen in the Alpha and 
Omega frieze which runs round the Church of Saint 
Nicodemus. 

In towns where there were large congregations of 
Christians the wide spaces of the basilica were retained 
in the interior, as, for instance, in the great Church of 
Saint Sophia at Constantinople. In Athens there was no 
need for vast interiors. All that the worshippers wanted 
was a compact building to act as a baptistery or as the 
gathering-place for a small congregation. The churches 
of Greece are usually distinguished by their small pro- 
portions and by their wealth of symbolism in design 
and ornament. 

The Church of Saint Nicodemus, which is now used 
for the Russian service, stands almost next door to the 
modern English church, and is a good example of the 
brick and mortar work which the Byzantine architects 
knew so well how to manage. Instead of the heavy stone 
lintels and columns with arches of concrete that had 
characterized the old basilicas, these Byzantine churches, 
built with brick and mortar, gained a new freedom in 
soaring vaulted spaces of dome and cupola. The red 
bricks that were used decoratively divided the courses of 
stone on the lower walls of the church, and on the higher 
levels broke into symbolic devices. 

The plan of this Church of Saint Nicodemus is 
much the same as that of Daphni. The one important 
difference is that a woman's gallery is here placed over 
the narthex and lower sides. At Daphni, a monastery 
church, no gallery for women was needed. Diehl 
admires the gallery from the architectural point of view. 
It allows the height of the vaults to be proportioned to 
their size, while the inner walls under the gallery are 
furnished with an arcade. Millet places the date of this 



THE BYZANTINE CHURCHES OF ATTICA 195 

building before the middle of the eleventh century. It 
is the only *^ city church " belonging to the larger group. 
The other churches of this type are found attached to 
wealthy monasteries in the country. If a large church 
were wanted in Athens itself, it was always easy to 
convert an old temple into a Christian church. Thus 
the Parthenon was used as the Church of Our Lady, 
and the Temple of Theseus became the Church of Saint 
George. Of the paintings on the interior of the Par- 
thenon enough remains to suggest in what strange guise 
the Christian artists made the heathen shrine conform 
to Byzantine models. There may once have been other 
large Byzantine churches in Athens, but if so they are 
among those that have been destroyed. 

The monasteries of Attica lurk in adorable hiding- 
places. Fertility and seclusion were the points to 
be looked for in choosing a site. A well-watered 
valley was the most desirable situation, provided it were 
well hidden from the sea. The holy Brothers lived in 
constant dread of pirates, and with good reason. The 
ruined monastery of Daou is only just within sight of 
the blue water, yet it fell a prey to a band of sea-robbers 
in the eighteenth century and has never been rebuilt. 
If piracy was rife even so late as the eighteenth century, 
it had been still worse throughout the so-called Dark 
Ages. The final isolation of Athens was due in no small 
measure to the fact that the rocky headlands of the 
yEgean were known as the haunt of corsairs. 

The Monastery Church of Daou is an interesting build- 
ing in a lovable spot. An hour's drive along the 
Marathon Road lies the little khan of Pikermi, and from 
this point a footpath leads through woods and up slop- 
ing hill-sides to a grove of noble plane-trees. Here 
is a ruined monastery of the fourteenth or fifteenth 
century, and around it are the olives and fields that 
the Brothers once cultivated. Queen AmaHa liked to 



196 DAYS IN ATTICA 

drive out here, and often had her tent pitched under 
the plane-trees for her midday siesta. It is strange 
that modern picnic parties do not follow her steps. 

The plan of the church seems to have been some- 
what unusual. Its central part had a seven-sided dome 
with a twelve-sided cupola ; four smaller cupolas 
finished the corners, and these with a small narthex 
at the south and an apse at the north end completed 
the compact oblong building. Later — perhaps early in 
the seventeenth century — an outer narthex was added 
at the south or seaward end. This is of great strength, 
considerably higher than the rest of the building, and 
stands as though spreading out its arms to protect the 
little church that nestles behind it. When the monks 
were driven from Daou they sought refuge at Mendeli, 
a monastery among the pines on the lower slopes of 
Pentelicus. Here a small Brotherhood still makes the 
traveller welcome. The situation is as beautiful as that 
of Daou, though without the glimpse of treacherous blue 
sea that cost them once so dear. It is the richest monastic 
establishment in Attica, and it was the only one to 
retain its individual privileges when the other monas- 
teries of Attica were put under the jurisdiction of the 
Archbishop of Athens (1702-7). Here again there are 
the thriving plane-trees and the clear bubbling spring 
that make a Byzantine monastery an oasis of delight on 
a hot day. 

The Assomatos or Monastery of the Holy Angels (literally 
the ^disembodied ones") is a humbler foundation on 
the outskirts of Athens, on the slopes of Lycabettus. 
The church has been renovated, and there is little 
Byzantine work to be seen. A few Brothers still live 
in the shady court that surrounds it and lead a life of 
passive benevolence. The Government has decreed that 
the foundation must lapse on the death of the present 
Brotherhood, so no new Brothers are enrolled. The 



THE BYZANTINE CHURCHES OF ATTICA 197 

old inhabitants do not seem afflicted by the decree. 
They crack their jokes, and keep their birthday parties, 
unmindful of the death-sentence hanging over their home, 
and the atmosphere of the cypress-shaded courtyard is 
one of cheerful domesticity. Small and muscular fowls 
run in and out of the stately gateway. The soldiers 
swing past to their barracks or to the cavalry stables next 
door. The bugle practice of the recruits outside goes 
on without interruption, animated if discordant. At 
all times of the year goatherds and their flocks gather 
round the monastery — many of them no doubt bringing 
their annual rents, for the Brotherhood still owns tracts 
of grazing-ground on the slopes of Hymettus. From 
this and other tokens it is clear that the Monastery of 
the Holy Angels was once a w^ealthy and important land- 
owner. The brethren were then workers on their own 
estates, and were probably successful farmers. The little 
white dome is now half-hidden by the giant cypresses 
around it. The olive wood which the Greek Govern- 
ment gave as a site for the English and American 
Schools of Archaeology was cut out of the monastery 
grounds. 

In contrast with the cheerful worldliness of the ^* Holy 
Angels " is the absolute desolation of Kaisarlani, once 
a much larger and more important foundation. It is 
now ruined and deserted. Little is known of its history. 
Its architecture would date it to somewhere about the 
eleventh century, and its name may imply that it was an 
imperial foundation. Or again, it is just as likely that 
it may not. Now it has become the usual noonday 
halting-place on the climb to the summit of Hymettus. 
It is a spot of rare beauty. A little spring rises near, 
and a grove of plane-trees have their thirsty roots well 
nourished by the moisture. It has been suggested that 
this rivulet is a tributary of the Ilissus, which was known 
to the ancients as Eridanus, and that the convent stands 



198 DAYS IN ATTICA 

on the site of an old temple to Aphrodite. A marble 
ram's head of classical design was placed by the Turks 
at the mouth of the spring. When Mohammed II 
entered Athens in 1458 it was the Abbot of Kaisariani 
who handed the keys of the town to the conqueror, a 
time-serving action that is said to have been rewarded 
by exemption from taxation. 

These four monasteries, Daou, Mendeli, Assomatos, and 
Kaisariani, together with the city church of Nicodemus 
and the great monastery of Daphni, complete the list 
of the larger churches in and around Athens. The 
story of Daphni is so intimately connected with the 
fortunes of the Prankish Dukes of Athens that it is 
treated in the next chapter, and we pass on to the little 
cruciform churches which seem more typically Athenian 
than their larger neighbours. 

Churches of the Cruciform Type. — Most attractive of all 
the town churches in Athens is the small building that 
stands outside the garish new Cathedral, its foundations 
already several feet below the level of the modern pave- 
ment. This is the Metropolitan Churchy so-called not 
because it was the original cathedral, but probably because 
it was the church attached to the home of the Bishop 
or Metropolitan. It has many names. Sometimes it is 
called the Catholicon, sometimes Saint Saviour (Hagios 
Elevtherios), sometimes Panagia Gorgoepikoos. There 
are conflicting accounts of its origin. Some claim that 
it has been built on the site of an ancient temple to 
Eleithyia, goddess of childbirth, whose name they say 
survives in the modern name Hagios Elevtherios, as her 
cult survives in the special devotion paid to the church 
by Athenian mothers. Another suggestion, not irrecon- 
cilable with the first, is that this church replaced an older 
Christian building that stood on the same spot, and that 
was perhaps destroyed by the Iconoclasts in the eighth 
century. This theory would offer a satisfactory way of 



THE BYZANTINE CHURCHES OF ATTICA 199 

accounting for the haphazard collection of sculpture, 
of which the church is composed. It certainly looks 
as though a heathen temple and an older Christian 
church had both provided materials for the odd patch- 
work of ornament, classical and Christian, sacred and 
profane, sometimes right side up and sometimes upside 
down, which has been built into the four outside walls 
of the church. 

A delicate frieze representing the festivals in the 
classical calendar is neighbour to Byzantine griffins, 
and to designs somewhat resembling the fleur-de-lis 
of the Franks. The love of external decoration has run 
riot. It is like the work of a child playing with jewels ; 
and the result is unique, charming, incongruous. Among 
the calendar-reliefs there is a representation of the Autumn 
Feast of Hercules. The hero stands in the middle hold- 
ing his club ; by his side is Hebe, his wife. Beside them 
are two travellers wrapped in cloaks, a winged figure 
with a vessel full of fruits, and a horseman, recalling 
the horse-races of this festival. The scraps of this frieze 
follow Attic merrymaking through its year and come 
like a pagan melody among the harmonies of pilgrim- 
music. 

On the south side of the church, fully exposed to the 
weather, lies a very different relic — a block of grey 
marble 7 feet long by 2 feet broad and i foot high. 
On this the following inscription is easily read : — 

-f- OvTOQ k(jTLv 6 Xidog awo Kava Trig VaXiXiag ottov 
TO vcwp olvov liroiriaev 6 K.{vpio)g ?'jjuwv ^l{ri(TOv)c; 

X{piaT6)g + 

("This is the stone from Cana in Galilee, where our 
Lord Jesus Christ changed the water into wine.'') 

Though so little venerated this stone can show better 
claim to authenticity than most Christian relics. 



200 DAYS IN ATTICA 

In the sixth century Antoninus of Plaisance mentions 
that he was shown at Cana of Galilee the stone couch 
on which our Lord reclined at the wedding supper, 
and that he, Antoninus, inscribed on it his own name 
and that of his parents. This stone tallies with his 
description, being polished on three sides as a couch 
placed in an angle of a room would naturally be, and 
it does actually bear also in faint lettering the following 
words : — 

Kal Trig jjLr\Tp6(T jjlqv ^Avtiovivov. 

Diehl, who discovered this latter inscription, has con- 
jecturally restored it thus : — 

MvrjaSrjTi, KvpLBf Tov irarpog kol rrjg fir]Tp6Q fiov 

AVTMVLVOV. 

(" Remember, Oh Lord, the Father and Mother of 
me Antoninus.") 

In the end of the nineteenth century this stone was 
discovered by M. Paris in a ruined church at Elateia. 
It may be that it was taken from Cana by a Byzantine 
emperor sometime in the seventh century. Perhaps it 
accompanied the sacred water-jars from Cana which 
were shown at Constantinople in the tenth century. At 
the sack of Constantinople in 1204, when the Crusaders 
scrambled for the precious relics, this stone may have 
fallen to the share of some Prankish prince (perhaps 
Otto de la Roche), who carried it off to adorn his new 
dominions. The church in which it was found at Elateia 
dates from the Prankish period, and seems to have been 
built on purpose to contain it. 

The Kapnikaraia. — A more staid edition of the Little 
Cathedral may be seen in the small church half-way 
down Hermes Street. In plan it is very much the 





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THE BYZANTINE CHURCHES OF ATTICA 201 

same, and is simplicity itself, with three apses at the 
east end and a small central dome. The narthex 
at the west end somewhat masks the cruciform design, 
which, however, is evident enough in the interior. As 
far as the evidence of the carving goes this church 
seems to date from the eleventh or twelfth century. It 
is popularly known as the Kapnikyria, or Kapnikarea, 
which has been translated *'Our Lady of the smoky 
aspect." This derivation is based only on the sound 
analogy, and hardly recommends itself. In Athens there 
are no *' smoky aspects." 

The Saints Theodore. — Of the same date and character 
as the Kapnikaraia is the Church of the two Saints Theo- 
dore outside the British Embassy. It once had coloured 
Rhodian plates built into its outer walls, a pleasant 
custom of which one often finds traces in Greece. The 
plates have now disappeared, but the hollow circles that 
held them still remain. In Portugal one finds the same 
pretty device, and there I have seen a precious tazza of 
blue glass plastered like an acroterion to the gable of 
a cottage. 

The Church of the Holy Apostles stands a few paces 
south-west of the Stoa of Attalus. It is probably the 
earliest in date of the Athenian churches, and is also 
the simplest in design. Choisy quotes it as a model 
of its kind. The problem with all these domed churches 
is how the weight of the dome shall be carried without 
blocking the central space in the interior of the church. 
In this case the dome is borne by four double arches, 
giving the church the form of a Greek cross, and 
each arm of the cross is finished by an apse. '' But 
what is to bear the outward thrust of the double arches ? 
Must the architect mar his work with buttresses ? By 
a happy inspiration the double arches are consohdated 
by small trefoil vaults, and thus the vaults encircle 
the church, press closely together, and support each 



202 DAYS IN ATTICA 

other, the outer ones leaning against the massive enclos- 
ing wall." This is the building which has been de- 
scribed as " recondite almost to subtlety," yet the effect 
is one of extreme simplicity. The ugly modern nave 
must be disregarded. 

The *^ Church Beautiful." — A small Byzantine church, 
less known than it deserves, lies in the wild scrub 
country to the north of Lycabettus. The pleasantest 
way to approach it is on foot. Leaving the Marathon 
Road almost a mile beyond Ambelokepi, it is easy to 
strike across the Turkovouni range through one of the 
steep defiles between the little hills. Across the open 
country beyond, a cart-track bears away to the right, 
and brings us, after a mile's walk, to the church, known 
to the countryside by the endearing name Omorphi 
Ekklesia—'' Lovely Church " or " Church Beautiful." 
Theoretically it may also be reached by carriage from 
the Patissia Road, but the country is rough and cabmen 
are wont to pretend ignorance of its whereabouts, so 
that for a first expedition I should always recommend 
a journey on foot. It is within sight of the little station 
of Heracleia, on the Cephissia Railway, and is easily 
found from this side also if the traveller does not mind 
a cross-country scramble. Wandering about these lonely 
moors it is difficult to believe that we are within an 
hour's walk of a European capital. A few shepherds 
with fierce dogs, or a solitary brushwood-gatherer are 
the only friends we are likely to meet. The church, 
which is small and dark, belongs to the cruciform type, 
with the central dome rising on a high drum. Its chief 
variation from the regular type lies in the addition of 
a narrow narthex and of an extra aisle on the south side. 
This aisle ends in an apse larger than the two side apses, 
but not so large as the central apse of the bema. It does 
not seem to be a later addition, for it is made of the 
same fine squared blocks of stone with alternate rows of 



THE BYZANTINE CHURCHES OF ATTICA 203 

brick that are seen in the rest of the building. Some 
later work appears, however, at its west end, where aisle 
and narthex are of inferior masonry. Little use is made 
of brick as ornament. Instead of brick designs there are 
the plain faces of masonry relieved by a delicate marble 
string-course that must once have run right round the 
building. There are also light marble columns finished 
with carved capitals in some of the windows. One of 
these capitals and some other fragments of carving lie on 
the floor inside the narthex. The door is usually locked, 
and the sleepy guardian of the solitude must be roused 
from some shady corner of the neighbouring huts. 
After the sunshine the meagre proportions of the church 
shut us down in chilly darkness. The four large central 
piers supporting the dome seem far too bulky for the 
narrow space around them. The whole interior gives 
an impression of massive solidity out of all proportion 
to the diminutive building. Yet its beauty is beyond 
dispute. It is not the beauty of line, but of colour. 
The darkness is filled with mysterious faces and blurred 
robes of crimson and blue. The walls have once been 
covered with fresco, and even where the damp has 
loosened the original painting it has set green stains to 
hide the gaps. The paintings in the centre of the church 
have been much restored. None are intrinsically of 
special merit, but as we pass from one grave figure to 
another, our eyes fighting with the darkness, we are left 
with a general sense of the reverence and fitness of the 
decoration. In the small apse on the north side there 
is a representation of God the Father, with the Spirit in 
the form of a Dove perched on His right forefinger. 
Behind the nimbus can be faintly distinguished the 
words DAAAIOS TGN HMEPQN (^' The Ancient of 
Days.") The superscription is not usual in Byzantine 
art, and we are grateful to the artist who set his own 
thought here, striking the note of Eternity for this little 
church set in the wilds. 



204 DAYS IN ATTICA 

There are numerous other small Byzantine churches 
scattered through Athens. They are already receiving 
the attention of scholars, and one looks forward to the 
day when there will be an exhaustive work on the sub- 
ject. In the meantime they stand in the middle of the 
modern town, a puzzle and an allurement. On feast 
days they are dressed with myrtle and small blue flags, 
and the interior smells of incense and honey. The 
honey scent seems to come from the candles, which are 
made of beeswax, a genuine native industry. In a sense 
the churches seem the special property of the Athenian 
bourgeoisie, for each one has a distinct place in the life 
of the citizens. At some of them cures are still wrought, 
as, for instance, in Saint John of the Column. Here an 
old church is built around a classical column. It goes 
through the middle of the church and sticks up through 
the roof like a chimney. In the inside it is hung with 
rags brought from the sick who wish to be healed. 

The remains of Byzantine Athens hide away in unlikely 
corners. We find them when we cease to look for them. 
It is much the same with the story of their builders. We 
know desperately little of the history of those nine cen- 
turies during which the fate of Athens was absorbed in 
that of her greater neighbour — Constantinople. From the 
foundation of the Eastern capital of the Roman Empire 
in the fourth century to its overthrow by the crusaders in 
1453, the fortunes of Athens were those of a provincial 
town on the outskirts of a harassed empire. She had her 
brief spells of glory, her small triumphs, her recurring 
misfortunes. Then again she lapsed into obscurity, and 
for perhaps half a century her history has to be con- 
structed from the mention of the town as a halting-place 
of an imperial traveller or from a runic inscription left 
by a northern invader. Owing to this meagreness of 
information these long centuries have been thrown 
together and called by the one comprehensive, non- 



THE BYZANTINE CHURCHES OF ATTICA 205 

committal name — " The Byzantine Period." Yet the 
single term is misleading. These years are not marked 
by any one salient characteristic. Athens was not on the 
downward grade throughout. There was a period of 
economic decay followed by a slow revival of prosperity. 
Society passed through a variety of changes. The pro- 
vincial institutions of ancient Greece slowly moulded 
themselves to the form of Byzantine feudalism, as in a 
later age the Byzantine Archon and Kavallaris them- 
selves in turn gave way to the Prankish Baron and 
Knight. 

Speaking broadly, the period of decline in Greece 
lasted from the Emperor Constantine to Justinian, and 
from Justinian onwards there was a gradual increase of 
prosperity. As the power of Christianity increased 
Athens gradually lost her prestige. History inclines to 
depict her as the faded beauty who clings to the memory 
of her former triumphs. She still practises the heathen 
rites, still keeps open her schools, and wonders why the 
world no longer heeds the voice of her charming. In 
time she is forced to recognize that her old position is 
undermined. The new teaching which had drawn men's 
hearts from the outward to the inward and had set 
symbolism for beauty was now united to the seat of 
world-power. The new hierarchy in heaven and earth 
left Athens and Olympos bare. What was the Parthenon 
bereft of the brooding spirit of the great image within ? 
What was Parnassos without those dim presences among 
its clouds ? 

The flower of pride hath bloomed, the ripened fruit 
Of suffering is all garnered up in tears : 
Ye that have seen the Reaper's wages told, 
Remember Athens. 

These words of an older poet read like a prophecy of 
the desolation that was felt by the finer spirits of the 



206 DAYS IN ATTICA 

time. Yet probably to most Athenians of the fourth and 
fifth centuries after Christ, matters did not present them- 
selves in this tragic guise. Athens had lost her pre- 
eminence in the religious world, but she still had her 
mission in the new society. As the university town par 
excellence she filled a place to the Eastern Empire for 
which it is impossible to find a modern parallel. Ail that 
Oxford and Cambridge have been to British scholars, all 
that Paris has been to European society, that Athens was 
for two centuries to the Byzantine world. Scholars were 
attracted by her schools of philosophy and rhetoric. 
Courtiers and officials came here to gain an Athenian 
manner and a conversational knowledge of the Greek 
tongue, important assets in court life. 

To understand what Athens was in this age it is enough 
to look at one of the most notable of her scholars — one 
who spent less than a year at her schools (a.d. 355-6), and 
yet counted Greece as his "true Fatherland," spoke of 
Athens as a lover, and wished that he could be " chained 
to the beloved benches " of the school. 

The Emperor Julian, known throughout Christendom 
as "Julian the Apostate," is one of the most pathetic 
figures in history. During his lonely and oppressed boy- 
hood he had learned to hate the Christian religion forced 
upon him by his cousin the Emperor Constantine. It 
must be admitted that Constantine's conduct in murder- 
ing Julian's father and other male relatives had not been 
calculated to inspire confidence in the religion that bore 
such fruit. Throughout his youth Julian was obliged to 
profess himself a Christian, but the idealism of his nature 
shrank from the harsh caricature of religion that sur- 
rounded him, and he turned enthusiastically to the 
teaching of the Greek philosophers. The main tragedy 
of his life lies in this, that his nature was one pre- 
eminently fitted to respond to a purified form of the 
Christian faith had there been any one qualified to 



THE BYZANTINE CHURCHES OF ATTICA 207 

present it to him ; had, for instance, Augustine taken the 
place of Gregory as his fellow-scholar. But connecting 
as he did the profession of Christianity with the hypocrisy 
and corruption of the imperial court, he thought it more 
possible to revive a purified form of paganism than to 
dissociate Christianity from its abuses. His short life as 
emperor was embittered by his futile attempts to galvanize 
a corrupt empire with his own mythical fervour. He 
and others of his school sought to give the old Olympian 
gods a new lease of life, and in this they were working 
against the trend of the age. A later generation enriched 
Christianity by bringing into it the philosophy and mys- 
ticism of the Neo-Platonists. To a man of Julian's 
sympathies it is easy to see w^hat the months in Athens 
must have meant. When his studies were interrupted 
by a sudden summons to the imperial court he was 
broken-hearted. In his manifesto to the Athenians he 
says : — 

" What torrents of tears I shed and how many laments, 
extending my hands to your Acropolis, and praying 
Athena to save the suppliant and not abandon him ; to 
this many of you who have witnessed it can attest, and 
above all the goddess herself whom I besought to let me 
die in Athens, rather than leave it." 

But the day came when Athens was to lose even the 
prestige that remained to her as the first school in the 
empire. Two imperial edicts brought this period to 
a close. The first established a rival university at Con- 
stantinople in the fifth century. The second (a.d. 529) 
was the edict of Justinian closing the schools of 
Athens and thus drawing the masters of thought to his 
own capital. Athens lost her university, yet there 
remained for centuries a certain intellectual energy and 
vividness among the citizens which distinguished them 
from the more orientalized subjects of the rulers of 
Constantinople. That at least is the impression one 



208 DAYS IN ATTICA 

derives not only from the chance sayings of literati Uke 
Synesius of Cyrene but also from the character of the 
two Athenian ladies, brilliant and hard as polished steel, 
who at long distant dates attracted the admiration of the 
Caesar and mounted the imperial throne. 

The first of these was Eudocia, whose original name 
was Athenai's, the daughter of an Athenian rhetorician 
and educated as a pagan. At the age of twenty-seven by 
her striking beauty she attracted the admiration of the 
young Emperor Theodosius II, changed her religion 
and her name and became his Empress (a.d. 421). At 
the age of fifty she fell under suspicion of unfaithfulness 
and was banished to Jerusalem, where she died after 
sixteen years of exile. Tradition credits her with the 
building of twelve Athenian churches. The other more 
masterful personality was that of Irene, who towards the 
end of the eighth century married one of the Iconoclastic 
Emperors, Leo IV. In her the old Athenian love of art 
survived sufficiently to induce her on the death of her 
husband to renounce the faith and oppress the cause 
of the Iconoclasts, the image-breakers. She ruled the 
empire for many years as regent for her son : when he 
grew up she still kept hold of the reins, was unseated, 
struggled back into power, headed a successful revolt 
against her son, imprisoned and blinded him. She 
all but became the wife of the Emperor Charlemagne, 
but was at last overthrown by another palace revolu- 
tion and died in exile in the Island of Lesbos (a.d. 803). 
In the persons of these two Athenian Empresses the 
Greek spirit knew a temporary triumph over her con- 
querors. 

Bitterly though the closing of the universities was 
resented at the time, its results may have been salutary to 
Athens from one point of view. Trade took the place of 
scholarship, and from the time of Justinian she was able 
to share in the revival of prosperity throughout the 



I 



THE BYZANTINE CHURCHES OF ATTICA 209 

empire. The coup de grace had been given to her old 
claims and to the old memories of heathendom. By the 
sixth century the people of Athens had left off bemoan- 
ing their vanished glories. They had learnt to be proud 
of their Emperor, proud of their connection with 
Byzantium, and proud that the Greek language was still 
used at court. In return Justinian showed himself mind- 
ful of their safety. The gates of Northern Greece, Ther- 
mopylae, Heraklea, and the Euripus were strengthened 
with fortresses. The walls of Athens and Eleusis were 
rebuilt and the fortified monastery of Daphni was placed 
at the most defensible point of the road from Eleusis. 
For the last five centuries the city had lain at the 
mercy of Visigoths, Vandals, Kostobocs, Herulians, as 
well as all the pirate hordes of the Mediterranean. 
She alone stemmed the tide of Gothic invasion in 
A.D. 262. Now at last she could cease to play the role 
of beauty in distress and, sheltered under the spreading 
wings of the empire, her citizens seem to have settled 
down to the jog-trot content of provincial life. 

There is a story that so well illustrates the tremendous 
prestige of Athens even in the eyes of the barbarian 
world that I cannot refrain from quoting it, though it is 
vouched for by no better authority than Zosimus, 
a thoroughly narrow-minded old pagan. The date is 
somewhere in the last five years of the fourth century 
A.D. Alaric, the newly elected leader of the Visigoths, 
inaugurated his career by a raid on the provinces of the 
Eastern Empire, striking first at the seemingly defenceless 
Athens. Then '' having gathered all his troops round the 
sacred city of Athens he was about to proceed to the 
assault. When lo 1 he beheld Athena Promachus, just 
as she is represented in her statues, clothed in full armour 
going round about the walls thereof, and Achilles stand- 
ing upon the battlements with that aspect of divine rage 
and thirst for battle which Homer ascribes to him when 



210 DAYS IN ATTICA 

he heard of the death of Patroclus. Awe-struck at the 
sight, Alaric desisted from his warlike enterprise, signalled 
for truce, and concluded a treaty with the Athenians. 
After which he entered the city in peaceful guise with a 
few of his followers, was hospitably entertained by the 
chief inhabitants, received presents from them and 
departed, leaving both Athens and Attica untouched by 
the ravages of war." 

Whatever lies at the foundation of this strange myth, it 
shows that Athens still kept a mysterious power over the 
hearts of men. Her first conquerors had felt it. To Philip 
of Macedon Athens humiliated was still the " theatre of 
glory." Even Alexander, sorely tried though he was, 
could never take vengeance on Athens. Sulla the Roman 
ravaged the city, but Alaric the Goth turned back 
ashamed from her defenceless walls. After Justinian her 
position was changed. Her territory was defended by 
substantial forts and garrisons. The glamour somewhat 
vanishes, and no more is heard of Achilles and Athena. 

The time of reviving prosperity under the Emperors 
who followed Justinian appears to have been one great 
period of church-building throughout Attica. Another 
came in the eighth and ninth centuries and may be 
attributed to the encouragement of the Empress Irene. 
The churches, as we have seen, are not large, but they 
are numerous. There is no single magnificent building 
speaking of a strong national life ; rather there are many 
pretty little churches such as would spring up in a pros- 
perous society of citizens, who, while retaining their old 
love of beautiful architecture, had frankly adopted the 
new religion. Gregorovius holds that the number of 
these churches is accounted for by the fact that Byzantine 
Athens was anxious to replace each heathen shrine by 
a Christian church. In many cases he has been able to 
establish a connection, either verbal or essential, between 
the Christian saint and the heathen deity. Thus Saint 



THE BYZANTINE CHURCHES OF ATTICA 211 

George the dragon-slayer replaces Herakles at Marathon 
and Theseus in Athens ; Athena becomes Saint Sophia 
in the Parthenon ; Artemis Amarysia becomes the Holy 
Virgin at Maroussi (Amaryseion). Sometimes the connec- 
tion is only philological, as when Saint Demetrius 
replaces Demeter, and Eleithyia becomes Hagios Eleu- 
therios (Saint Saviour). But though it is obvious that in 
almost every case the church stood on the site of some 
heathen shrine, it is too much to say that the sanctity of 
the precinct was the cause of the church being built. 
The temper of the Athenians was still " very religious," 
and the revival of prosperity gave them the opportunity 
of beautifying their town while honouring their patron 
saints. No doubt the presence of an old shrine helped 
to decide the question where a new church should be 
placed. The continuity of sacred sites is a marked 
characteristic throughout Greece, one of the most 
permanent elements among her shifting records. It is 
not uncommon in modern times to see a new church 
built over and around the older one which it is to 
replace. Not until the new one is completed is the old 
one demolished. Numerous as the churches are now, 
there were many more at the beginning of last century, 
for numbers perished in that barbarous wave of 
modernism that swept over Athens in the beginning of 
Otho's reign, and others have been sacrificed that the 
classical sites below them might be explored. 

The last romantic character who flashes across the dark- 
ness of Athenian history during this Byzantine period is 
Hardrada, whose name figures on the stone lion which 
Morosini carried to Venice from the Piraeus. The runes 
on it have been translated thus, on the right side : "Hakon 
re-united to Ulf, to Asmund and to Orn, conquered this 
port. These men and Harald the Tall imposed con- 
siderable fines owing to the insurrection of the Greek 
nation. Dalk was kept in captivity in distant countries ; 



212 DAYS IN ATTICA 

Egil went on a campaign with Ragnar in Roumania . . . 
and Armenia." 

And on the left side : *^ Asmund engraved these runes 
in union with Asgeir, Thorleif, Thord, and Ivar by 
request of Harald the Tall, although the Greeks on 
reflection forbade it." 

If this be the correct reading of the inscriptions,^ this 
old lion from the Piraeus guards a chapter of Athenian 
history rich in romantic possibilities. Harald (brother 
of King Olaf of Norway) made his way as a young man 
through Russia to Constantinople and took service 
under the Byzantine emperors. He won the confidence 
of the Vaerings (the Emperor's northern mercenaries) 
until at last they would have none other to be their 
captain. 

The Heimskringla Saga tells the story, and though it 
does not mention Athens by name, it shows how he 
roamed the Mediterranean fighting the African pirates and 
visiting ^* Greekland," i.e. the Greek-speaking world. 

" Harald had been but for a little while in the host 

' A later reading which omits Harald's name runs thus : — 

On the left side : 

" After Haakon Ulfung's men cut these runes when they heard of 
his death in this harbour. In recompense for him very many of the 
Greek folk had now to suffer thraldom. There was famous plunder- 
ing, so that merchant ships were taken. Holmkel won rich booty 
there." 

On the right side : 

" Asmund cut these runes and Asgaut also some. Those in the 
land had to pay in full for him who fell bloody in the fight, even 
though it was long after the hostile deed ; for the warrior-band 
owns plundered goods in excess as recompense for the enormous 
crime. Sakar won rich booty there." 

Finally on the left hind-leg : 

" Gallant men cut the runes ; also Karl carved." 

I am indebted to Mr. W. A. Craigie, of Oxford, for the above 
translation from Professor Sophus Bugge's Populaer-Videnskabelige 
Foredrag, published in 1907. 



FLA TE XI r 




COLOSSAL LION FROM PIRAEUS 

NOW OUTSIDE THE AKSENAL AT \EMCE 



THE BYZANTINE CHURCHES OF ATTICA 213 

when the Vaerings drew them much to him, and they 
would fare all together whenso were battles, and it came 
to this that Harald became captain over all the Vaerings. 
He and Grygir fared wide about the isles of Greekland 
and wrought mighty deeds of war on the corsairs." 

After winning fame and riches in Africa, Sicily, and 
the Eastern Mediterranean, Harald fell into disgrace ; 
according to the Saga he had won the love of the 
Empress Zoe and was imprisoned in Constantinople. 
He and two boatfuls of Vaerings escaped from Con- 
stantinople. The harbour entrance was chained, but 
shooting at the chain with his boat he made the vessel 
leap the barrier and slide over, and so escaped. After 
this he made his way to Norway through Russia and 
never came south again. Wars with Denmark and with 
England filled the rest of his life, and at the age of fifty 
he was killed by the English Harald in the Battle of 
Stamford Bridge, just before Harald was killed by 
William at Hastings. He is thus one of the few links 
between England and the East during these early days. 
His life is one of unparalleled adventure, and the stormy 
days of his youth in the sunny Mediterranean make a 
streak of glory across the grey, grim tales of the Sagas. 
On his return from Constantinople we read how he " let 
spread abroad a big neat's hide, and let pour thereon 
the gold from the bags ; then were scales gotten and 
weights and the money was parted asunder and shared 
all of weight ; and all who saw it thought it a mickle 
wonder that in the Northlands so much gold should be 
come together in one place. But indeed this was the 
havings and wealth of the King of the Greeks, where, as 
all men say, houses are full of red gold." 



IX 
THE AGE OF CHIVALRY 

I 

DAPHNI AND THE DUKES OF ATHENS 

BETWEEN the last view of Athens and the first 
view of the Bay of Salamis there Hes on the 
Sacred Way a stretch of almost level road. Here 
the hills shut in the pass to north and south. The 
pines grow thicker, the narrow stretch of grass by the 
roadside widens to an English greensward across which 
the wooded slopes of Mount ^galeus make a deep 
shadow. 

It is a spot to dream in, a place hidden from the 
remembrance of the outside world, and Nature seems to 
have provided it on that much-trodden road between 
Athens and Eleusis as the inevitable point for a noonday 
halt. Here the Greeks set a temple to " Apollo of the 
Laurel," and though the laurels no longer grow, they are 
remembered in the modern name of " Daphni." On the 
site of the old temple there is now a ruined Byzantine 
monastery — the Monastery of Daphni — dear to all who 
know it. All that is seen from the road as one ap- 
proaches is the ruin of a large enclosure with a battle- 
mented front running parallel to the Sacred Way, and 
behind it the ruddy dome of a church built of sand- 

214 



THE AGE OF CHIVALRY 215 

stone with lines of red tiles set between each course. 
The whole effect as seen from this point is of a strong 
square base below and sweeping curves above. The 
enclosure runs from the road to the foot of the hill. The 
piece of wall that remains suggests a fortress rather than 
a monastery, and if Monsieur Millet's theory be correct, 
it was to seize a point of defence on the main road to 
Athens that the first monastery was founded here in the 
fifth or sixth century. Quite possibly it was Justinian 
himself, that great defender of imperial outposts, who set 
the brotherhood here to watch as well as to pray. Half 
a mile further along the road to Eleusis remains of 
another mediaeval fortification are visible ; here some 
force of soldiers may have been lodged to defend the 
monastery in case of need. All that is left of the early 
monastery is the enclosing wall, some cells behind it, and 
the foundations of the west end of the first church. The 
code of monasticism was stern in those earliest days. 
The cells of the monks were placed in the most retired 
corner of the enclosure. In the outer court the 
monastery carried on its gracious work as healer and 
teacher of the neighbourhood. The inner court was 
reserved for the dwellings of the brotherhood, where they 
could meditate and pray behind the wall that screened 
them from the comings and goings of the high road. 
By the eleventh century the traditions of the place had 
changed. The monastery had probably been deserted, 
then re-occupied and partially rebuilt ; and the monks had 
lost their reputation for austerity. 

To this latter period belongs the delightful story told 
by Theodoros Prodromos in his life of Meletios, in which 
he tells how one of the Daphni brotherhood left the 
monastery and sought admission in another settlement 
which Meletios had founded on Mount Cithaeron. 
Meletios was the leader of a small monastic revival ; he 
was also a disciplinarian and apparently a reader of 



216 DAYS IN ATTICA 

character. Before many months had passed the monk 
from Daphni found that he had no vocation for sainthood. 
He resolved to return to the sheepskin beds, the soft 
raiment, and the good living at Daphni, and at the same 
time to take with him the golden chalice of these Brothers 
who were too ignorant to value the good things of life. 
Having stolen and hidden his prize, he came to his 
superior to ask for leave of absence. "Go in peace," 
answered Meletios ; " it is not by violence that we would 
constrain men to follow the path of virtue. But as for 
that cup which you have stolen and hidden under a 
stone, it must be restored lest the holy brethren be scan- 
dalized." At these words the monk threw himself to the 
ground confessing his fault and imploring pardon. 

The thirteenth century was full of stirring events. In 
1204 the empire was shaken to its foundations by the 
Latin conquest of Constantinople, and even remote Daphni 
felt the shock. In 1205 Otto de la Roche seized the prin- 
cipality of Athens and his army sacked the monastery. 
There is no word of slaughter, so it is probable that the 
monks ran away before the approach of the marauding 
crusaders. After the disappearance of the orthodox com- 
munity Otto de la Roche handed the monastery over to 
the Abbey of Bellevaux, his neighbour in Burgundy. It 
seems a somewhat impracticable gift, but the missionary 
enthusiasm of those days refused to admit obstacles. 
Probably not later than 1207 Daphni was occupied by a 
band of Cistercian brothers, and in 121 1 it received recog- 
nition as daughter community of the Burgundian Cister- 
cians. It now became the Westminster of the new 
principality of Athens, and here the chiefs of the De la 
Roche dynasty were buried. 

It is here at Daphni that one comes nearest to the 
days of the Prankish Dukes. In Athens itself little 
remains of their building. This is not wholly due to the 
greater excellence of the classical work. The Franks 



THE AGE OF CHIVALRY 217 

were no jerry-builders, as may be seen from the for- 
tresses at Mistra and Gheraki and other remains in the 
Peloponnese. At Athens the tower built by one of the 
Burgundian or Italian Dukes should still have been 
visible at the west end of the Acropolis had it not been 
deliberately destroyed in 1874 by the classical enthusiasts 
who cleared the Acropolis of all mediaeval build- 
ings. Engravings of the eighteenth century show the 
high, rather narrow stone tower standing a little to the 
north of the Propylaea. It looked strange enough among 
the shining marble columns, and it was perhaps natural 
that when the old Turkish town on the hill-top was de- 
molished the Prankish remains vanished also. From the 
classical point of view the work of restoration has been 
so brilliantly successful that regrets seem ungrateful, and 
yet the lover of mediaevalism sighs for this vanished 
landmark of the Franks. 

Although this period (i 205-1456) is commonly spoken 
of as the period of Prankish rule, it must be remembered 
that in Attica at any rate only one Prank, in the strict sense, 
ever was Duke. The house of De la Roche came from 
Burgundy ; Walter of Brienne, who succeeded them, was 
a Frenchman, but his kingdom fell to the Catalan Dukes, 
who were of Spanish origin. The Acciaiuoli were an 
Italian family, and on their downfall the principality 
became part of the Turkish Empire. Yet the term 
** Prankish " is not altogether a misnomer, for the civiliza- 
tion that the conquerors brought with them was the 
civilization of Prance, and French was the language 
spoken throughout the country. Even to-day an Eng- 
lishman may hear himself spoken of as a " Frank " when 
he is in the East. One wonders if the general widespread 
use of the word " Frank " for a man of Western Europe 
dates from the fourth crusade, 

After the fall of Constantinople the dominions of 
the Byzantine Empire were parcelled out among the 



218 DAYS IN ATTICA 

crusaders, the French and the Venetians obtaining a 
lion's share. Buchon summarizes the sudden growth 
of French power in a teUing sentence : *^A Frankish 
empire was founded at Constantinople, a Frankish king- 
dom at Salonica, and Frankish principahties from Ther- 
mopylae to Cape Matapan." Boniface, Marquis of 
Montferrat, who had held the office of commander-in- 
chief in the crusading army, was made king of a wide 
territory stretching round the coast from the Island of 
Thasos to the Isthmus of Corinth. Out of this kingdom 
of Saloniki, as it was called, were carved fiefs for lesser 
knights. Foremost among these was Otto de la Roche, 
a Burgundian nobleman, who gained possession of 
Athens and Thebes. Otto was known by the vague title 
Megas Kyres, or Grand Sire. His successor, Guy, ob- 
tained from Louis IX of France the right to use the 
title Duke of Athens. In passing one notes the mag- 
nanimity of the gentle Louis, who gave this new honour 
to Guy on the occasion of a penitentiary visit. Guy had 
gone to France to beg the king's forgiveness for his 
breach of the peace with William Villehardouin, a neigh- 
bour in the South, and returned not only with for- 
giveness but with a new title to boot. The French kings 
were indulgent overlords to these distant fiefs — indeed, 
it would have been hard to be anything else, for the 
arm of royal justice could not reach to Greece. 

For a hundred and three years Athens remained in 
the hands of this Burgundian dynasty. It was only 
on the extinction of the male line of De la Roche that 
the Duchy passed to Walter of Brienne, the son of a 
French knight, " true athlete of Christ and fathf ul boxer 
of the Church." 

Walter of Brienne held Athens for three years. During 
his short reign the foreign dynasty touched its highest 
point of wealth and power. Yet in 131 1 his splendid 
array of knights was destroyed on the banks of the 



THE AGE OF CHIVALRY 219 

Cephissus in Boeotia. The Duke was killed and the 
Duchy of Athens passed to his conquerors, the Catalan 
Grand Company. 

The adventures of this band of mercenary knights 
make one of the strangest chapters of history. They 
had fought in Sicily during the long wars between 
Anjou and Arragon. Then when the peace of 1282 
left the lawless elements of the population out of 
employment they left Sicily and sailed to Constan- 
tinople, where they first served, and afterwards defied, 
the Emperor Andronicus. Having laid waste the banks 
of the Bosphoros, they became mere brigands and 
fought their way through Macedonia and Thessaly, 
descending finally upon Greece, where Walter of Brienne 
was glad to accept their services in his struggle with 
the neighbouring princes of Wallachia and Epirus. They 
then served him as they had already served the emperor. 
Having emptied his treasuries at the rate of some thou- 
sand pounds per day, they refused to accept dismissal 
and turned their arms against their employer. Com- 
posed of heterogeneous elements and various nation- 
alities, they seem to have been in a chronic state of 
mutiny in every interval of peace ; yet in the field their 
discipline was perfect and throughout they managed 
to retain their title of " unconquered Catalans." In 
1840 the fall of a wall at Chalcis brought to light an 
enormous quantity of ancient arms and armour of the 
fourteenth century, some of which is evidently of 
Spanish, some of French, and some of Turkish work- 
manship. These were brought to Athens and may still 
be seen in the Polytechnic Museum, a large building 
almost next door to the National Museum. 

It was on the banks of the Boeotian Cephissus (a 
rather larger river than its Athenian namesake) that 
the great battle was fought. 

The river, which rises on Parnassos, flowed at this 



220 DAYS IN ATTICA 

date into the Copaic Lake. It was in the month of 
March that Walter of Brienne set out from his gay 
capital of Thebes to meet the Catalans in the plain that 
encloses the bed of this river, at a time of year when 
the snows on Parnassos were melting and the river must 
have been at its fullest. The Catalan leaders blocked 
the bed of the river and turned its waters over the 
surrounding country then covered with springing corn. 
The Prankish knights scorning subtle devices put their 
horses straight at the foe, but before they could reach 
them they were caught in this newly-made bog. The 
Catalans striding in among them on foot had only to 
butcher the Franks as they floundered in the mire. The 
tactics are similar to those used at the Battle of Bannock- 
burn only three years later. Had the tale of the Prankish 
defeat been brought by roving troubadours to Scotland, 
or were these but the obvious tactics of a time when 
the day was won if the first terrific onslaught of the 
enemy could be broken ? This battle on the Cephissus took 
place only a few leagues from the site of the still more 
famous Battle of Chaeronea, when again the lords of 
Athens and Thebes had been routed by an invader from 
the North (338 B.C.). But on that occasion the cavalry 
under young Alexander charged with great effect. The 
lion which the Thebans placed here to commemorate 
their dead long lay in fragments on the ground. It 
has now been put together again and sits looking with 
gloomy brows across the plain, where the eagles hover 
over meadows sanguine still with crimson poppies. 

After this catastrophe the Duchy of Athens remained 
in the hands of the Catalan Grand Company. The 
adventurers became rulers and settled on the good land 
they had won. At the end of fifteen years they put 
themselves under the Sicilian branch of the house of 
Arragon and the Duchy of Athens remained an appanage 
of Sicily until the year 1388. 



THE AGE OF CHIVALRY 221 

In this year the Catalans fell foul of their powerful 
neighbour, Nerio Acciaiuoli, who was Governor of Corinth. 
Perhaps the seventy years of peace had demoralized their 
fighting qualities. At all events the " unconquered Cata- 
lans " were defeated by an enemy whom two generations 
earlier they would have despised. The Acciaiuoli were 
originally a Florentine family of bankers. Like the 
Medici in the following century, they rose by means 
of their wealth first to be ministers and then rulers. 
Nerio was in the service of the Neapolitan dynasty of 
Arragon when appointed to the governorship of Corinth. 
The overthrow of the Catalan Company eventually gave 
him the Duchy of Athens in addition to the other 
territories over which he ruled. His son Antony 
Acciaiuoli had a peaceful reign of forty years. He 
adorned the city with many buildings, but if any remain 
they cannot be identified. Finlay describes him ^^ invit- 
ing his Florentine relations to Greece and entertaining 
them with festivals and hunting-parties" — a pleasant 
picture to place against our classical background. It 
is the Athens of "A Midsummer Night's Dream," but 
what did Shakespeare know of this romantic bypath 
of history ? 

In spite of apparent prosperity the dominion of the 
Western princes in Greece was slowly crumbling. The 
fall of one house weakened its neighbours. In 1432 
the princes of Achaia finally yielded to the growing 
power of the Byzantines aided by their splendid Albanian 
levies. The Kingdom of Saloniki had also lost its sepa- 
rate existence and in 1320 it was merged in the Empire 
of Roumania. As Walter of Brienne had sacrificed his 
kingdom by calling in the Catalans to aid him, so Nerio 
of the house of Acciaiuoli paved the way for the down- 
fall of his dynasty by allying himself with the vigorous 
Ottoman power. In 1453 Europe was shocked by the 
news that the Turks had taken Constantinople, and 



222 DAYS IN ATTICA 

from that time it was a foregone conclusion that the 
decadent Latin kingdoms in Greece would eventually 
be absorbed in the expansion of the Ottoman Empire. 
Three years after the fall of Constantinople, Moham- 
med II besieged Franco Acciaiuoli in the Acropolis and 
made himself master of Attica. The permanent popu- 
lation of the country had had time to grow tired of 
the misgovernment of their Florentine masters ; and 
even as the Franks had been hailed as deliverers from 
the tyranny of Byzantine officials, so the Turks were 
welcomed as deliverers from the " Franks " as the Italian 
rulers were still called. This, then, is the brief outline 
of the period during which the chivalry of the West 
held court in Athens. 

The impression left by the chronicles is that this 
was a time of prosperity almost unequalled in Greek 
history. To be sure the chroniclers themselves were 
all more or less under the glamour of hero-worship. 
Whether the hero were the chronicler or his lord, the 
vivid exaggerations and prejudices of a partisan make 
the old records very good reading. The Metrical book 
of the Conquest, in the gallicized greek of the period 
was written seemingly by a Gasmule, as the child of 
Greek and French parents was called. Villehardouin's 
Conquest of Constantinople was written by a French knight 
who tells of the taking of Constantinople and the sub- 
sequent division of Greece among the crusaders. The 
Chronicle of the Noble Ramon Muntaner is by a Spanish 
leader in the Catalan Company. Thus two at least of 
the three authorities were soldiers and eye-witnesses of 
the events they describe. The chronicles of Villehar- 
donin are coloured by the author's devotion to the 
Marquis of Montferrat with whose death the record ends ; 
while Muntaner's writings are the reminiscences of an 
old soldier, who from the peace of his own Spanish 
castle looked back upon a long life of desperate adven- 



1 



THE AGE OF CHIVALRY 223 

tures. The records ring with the joy of action ; they 
have the soldier's frankly one-sided view of history 
and a genial acceptance of the inevitable. And what an 
age of romance that was ! Is there anything in history 
equal to this tale of the gay crusaders who set out with 
the Church's blessing to win the sepulchre of Christ and 
who turned aside to destroy the great bulwark of 
Christendom against the Turk, and who then as they 
struggled home helped themselves to the territories of 
the Christian princes of the East ? That lands thus won 
should have been held for so many generations is one 
of the marvels of history. The conquerors must have 
been born rulers and born soldiers, and for the peace 
of Europe one can but give thanks that their like are 
known no more. 

In Athens itself there does not seem to have been 
much resistance to their rule. Michael Akominatos, the 
Archbishop of Athens, had shown himself in former 
times capable of defending his see as a warrior-priest, 
but he submitted to the inevitable and retired to the 
little Island of Keos. The Latin form of worship was 
celebrated in the Greek churches of Athens ; the Par- 
thenon became '* Our Lady of Athens." Only in one 
church (beside the Tower of the Winds) the Greek 
priests were still allowed to perform their services. 
This was afterwards turned into a mosque and is now 
a military bakehouse. 

The letters of the good old Archbishop Akominatos 
tell us what little we know of the town of Athens at the 
time of the conquest. Incidentally also his own portrait 
is revealed and we see him spending the evening of his 
life in exile, amusing himself with the works of Euclid, and 
perhaps on a fair day cheered by the sight of the Attic 
coast-line on his north-west horizon. Ramon Muntaner 
would have us believe that a thousand French knights 
with their families were settled in Attica and Bceotia. 



224 DAYS IN ATTICA 

This total need not be accepted as literally accurate, 
but it helps us to realize that at this time Athens and 
Thebes, the two capitals of the De la Roche dynasty, 
were both large and prosperous towns. The country 
was thickly covered with villages ; trade flourished in 
oil and wine, in silk and in purple dye, and of more than 
one Duke of Athens it is recorded that he " embellished 
the town with buildings." The Latins of the thirteenth 
and fourteenth centuries had a lusty barbarian scorn for 
the builders of the Parthenon. They did not hesitate 
to place their palace within the walls of the Propylaea, 
to build the ancient blocks into their tower, nor to 
celebrate Mass in the Parthenon. In this, however, they 
were but following the example of their predecessors 
who had made of it a Christian basilica. It is as though 
the pale background of antiquity were suddenly made 
the scene of a mediaeval tournay with all its blare and 
blazonry. For two and a half centuries the bold show 
lasted. Then it passed as suddenly as it came, and with 
the echoes of its tumult passed the remembrance of its 
deeds. Only such lovers of romance as Boccaccio, 
Chaucer, and Shakespeare kept alive the name of *' Duke 
of Athens." 

Daphni was in its glory during the days of the De la 
Roche dynasty. The archives at Mons state that this 
was the burial-place of the family. Walter of Brienne 
also left directions that he was to be buried here. A 
large marble sarcophagus standing on the left side of 
the church door bears in relief a cross quartered with 
fieur-de-lis and snakes. For many years this was known 
as the tomb of Guy de la Roche, but M. Millet has 
pointed out that these were not the arms of the De la 
Roche family — nor indeed of any known knight. 

Neither the Spanish nor the Italian rulers of Athens 
paid the same regard to Daphni, yet it kept some 
importance as a centre of French culture. The connec- 



THE AGE OF CHIVALRY 225 

tion with the parent community was no fictitious bond, 
and every four years the abbot had to journey across 
Europe to attend the Chapter General at Citeaux. The 
complaints made by the elderly abbots of the life of 
adventure thus imposed upon them led to the gradual 
extension of the interval at which the journeys were 
taken. As an outpost planted well in the enemy's 
country Daphni enjoyed more consideration than the 
size of its community would warrant. One abbot 
returned from his pilgrimage to Citeaux with no less 
precious a relic than an arm of John the Baptist. 

Instead of sinking into insig.nificance and merging 
in the Greek world around them the little band of 
Cistercian brethren retained for centuries their French 
traditions and kept alive their fellowship with all the 
religious world of western Europe. Of the Cistercian 
cloister little now remains except the two rows of arcade 
in the courtyard. In the wall of the church are corbels 
which supported one side of the cloister. There are 
also tierce-point arches at the west end, which are 
quite in harmony with French architecture of the 
thirteenth century. 

To-day one approaches the church through a courtyard 
on the south side. The court as we see it is com- 
paratively modern, but the spirit of the place has sealed 
this also in its bond of peace. The whitewashed columns 
and the dull green paint of doors and windows have 
been toned by time to pleasing harmony. A well- 
wrought bell of old green bronze hangs low in the 
branches of a tree and behind it four giant cypresses 
and a twisted olive are silhouetted against the light 
buildings of the courtyard. The Cistercians of the 
thirteenth and fourteenth centuries would surely feel 
at home if they entered the low doorway to-day. 

From the courtyard the church is entered through 
a door on its south side, but to get a true idea of the 

Q 



226 DAYS IN ATTICA 

building we must stand at the west end where the 
original entrance was placed and from there look down 
the length of the church to the three apses glowing with 
colour, at the east end. The church is not large. The 
porch outside this western door is apparently an addi- 
tion by the Cistercians of the thirteenth century. The 
original eleventh-century building comprised only the 
narthex and the basilica, in the centre of which rose 
the dome. The ground-plan is simplicity itself. The 
outward pressure of the large vault is met by eight solid 
buttresses, instead of the apses and cupolas that bear 
the thrust in some of the smaller churches. 

The interior did not depend for effect on an elaborate 
perspective of receding columns, arches, and niches. 
Nothing was there to distract the^ye from the main 
beauty of the church — its glorious mosaics. It is 
impossible to get much satisfaction from the fragments 
of these still left in place, owing to the conscientious 
restoration with its unsightly patches of white plaster. 
Yet one who knows the churches of Palermo or Ravenna 
will not find it hard to imagine how Daphni looked 
in its days of glory. The old monks stood on a pave- 
ment of rich inlaid marbles, the gold and blue of the 
mosaic wall shining out of the coloured gloom ; the 
tempered light slanting into the church through the 
stained glass overhead. In the height of the central 
dome the deep eyes of the Pantocrator were bent over 
the worshippers as from the gold vault of heaven. 
Around Him circled sixteen prophets, while beneath 
were four gospel scenes referring to the union of the 
divine and human natures in Christ : the Annunciation, 
the Nativity, the Baptism, and the Transfiguration. The 
rest of the church is filled with scenes chosen from the 
gospels and with portraits of bishops, deacons, martyrs 
and biblical characters. In the apse at the east end the 
Virgin was seated with an archangel on either side of her. 



THE AGE OF CHIVALRY 227 

As regards date the mosaics must be placed between 
the rebuilding of the monastery in the eleventh and its 
occupation by the Cistercians in the twelfth century. 
In the main they adhere to the traditional types of 
such work, yet there are innovations in the treatment 
of gesture and drapery that show a distinct advance on 
the earlier mosaics of Justinian's age. 

One can pass out of the church by a small door on 
the north side. Here are the ruins of the old eleventh- 
century refectory and the original fortress wall of the 
earliest enclosure. On this side the fa9ade of the church 
is in a state of comparatively good repair, solid stone 
walls with no decoration beyond the three windows and 
their arches of ornamental brickwork. The narrow 
lights of the windows and their slender shafts are just 
sufficient to relieve the general impression of rather 
sombre plainness. From this point the junction of the 
old eleventh-century church with the porch on the 
west is well seen. 

A scramble round the north-west corner brings one 
in front of the fa9ade of the porch. Here are unsightly 
gaps due to earthquakes and Lord Elgin. Earthquakes 
have torn away a third of the fafade, and Lord Elgin 
has removed the Ionic pillars and capitals which formed 
the chief glory of this arcade. One column and one 
capital remain on the south side. 

After the latin conquest Daphni ceased to grow. For 
two and a half centuries the Catholic community lived on 
prosperous but isolated. During the last century of its 
existence it remained as a solitary watch-tower forsaken 
by its founders and no longer able to keep in touch with 
its parent house at Citeaux. In 1458 when Mohammed II 
entered Athens the Cistercians left Daphni. For a time 
the monastery was deserted. Then the tolerance of the 
Ottoman Government allowed the Christians to reinhabit 
it ; this time, however, it was once more an " Orthodox " 
(i.e., Greek church) and not a "Catholic" settlement. 



228 DAYS IN ATTICA 

The rest of the story is a tale of decay. Travellers in 
the seventeenth ^ and eighteenth ^ centuries found it 
almost deserted. The monks were perpetually driven to 
take refuge from Turks and corsairs in a hermitage in 
the hill above. During the War of Independence it was 
used as a barracks and a powder-magazine, and for a 
time it also served as a lunatic asylum. To-day it is left 
to the dignified seclusion of old age. The spirit of peace 
has fallen upon it and nothing breaks the stillness of its 
solitude. Only on a festa a few young Greeks from 
Athens come to drink coffee at the little wayside inn 
under its shadow. They throw their caps in the air and 
dance on the turf, but with sunset their shadows vanish 
and the ghosts of the De la Roche Dukes of Athens 
steal out to pace the cloisters of their burial-place. 

A few hundred yards to the south-east of the monastery 
there is a small chapel in ruins, containing two tombs 
that seem to date from the fourteenth and fifteenth cen- 
turies. There is a legend which makes the chapel the 
retreat of an old hermit before the monastery was built. 
The legend, which may go back to Prankish times, tells 
how the son of the King of Megara loved the daughter 
of the King of Eleusis. The marriage was approved by 
the two kings and all went well until one day the Prince 
mysteriously disappeared. Years passed away, and seeing 
that he did not return his betrothed determined to take 
the veil. She retired to Daphni, where she waited 
humbly on the old hermit in the little chapel and spent 
her days in prayer and fasting. One day she was pre- 
paring a fish for the old man's supper when inside it 
she found the ring she had given her lover. Now indeed 
she knew that he was surely drowned, and the time 
of her noviciate being over she took the veil. This is 
the point at which the vanished hero makes a dramatic 
entry rolling before him a heavy barrel, which turns out 
* Spon and Wheler, 1678. ^ Chandler, 1765. 



THE AGE OF CHIVALRY 229 

to be full of florins. There are six similar barrels waiting 
on the beach, and after these have all been brought 
up to the monastery the Prince explains that he had 
lost his ring while bathing and immediately afterwards 
had been carried off by pirates and sold to a rich 
merchant at Algiers. In cultivating his master's land 
he had come across a hidden treasure, and having bought 
his freedom he asked to be sent back to his native land 
and to take with him as a present a few barrels of salt. 
The merchant seems to have considered this a reasonable 
request and the florins were safely hidden in the salt. 
The Prince had hoped to marry the Princess and claim 
his kingdom, but finding that his beloved has become 
a nun he vows that he will turn monk. With the 
contents of three barrels they build the monastery of 
Daphni and end their days there with the old hermit. 
The contents of the remaining four barrels are still 
hidden in the woods behind the monastery. When they 
are found the monastery will be rebuilt and will enjoy 
a second period of glory. Thus ends the legend which 
has the true ring of French romantic poetry and carries 
us back to the days when Burgundian knights and ladies 
rode out to the fresh woods of Daphni and reconstructed 
the old story of ^* Pierre et Maguelonne " to suit the new 
surroundings. In passing one may also suggest that the 
heroine's name may have lingered, become changed to 
Madeleine, and thus have given rise to the otherwise 
untraceable legend that the monastery was founded by 
Mary Magdalene. 

n 

THEBES AND THE COMING OF AGE OF 
GUY DE LA ROCHE 

Thebes we visited in early spring. There had been 
heavy rains and the fountain of Ares was surrounded 
by deep pools of water. The heavy clayey soil clung 



230 DAYS IN ATTICA 

to our shoes. Boeotian mud is different from the soupy 
Attic mud, as different as Boeotia and the Thebans are 
still in every particular distinct from Attica and the 
Athenians. The first spring rains had softened the buds 
of the plane-trees, and the streets of the town on the hill 
above the fountain were thatched with young green 
leaves and paved with little runnels of water. This is 
the impression left on my mind by Thebes : shady 
streets, running waters, and a sense of leisurely industry. 
The booths on either side of the street were open, the 
copper-smiths and tin-smiths clanged their hammers ; 
occasionally a man or dog strolled across the road. The 
town was awake and was alive, but that was all that 
could be said. Business was certainly not brisk. 

And this was Thebes, the great rival of Athens in 
Prankish as in Hellenic days. Except for the dis- 
mantled Castle of St. Omer at the lower end of the town 
there seemed little to distinguish it from any other 
country town in Greece. 

Legends cluster round Thebes as thickly as round the 
Acropolis of Athens. Here Cadmus reigned and CEdipus, 
and here King Pentheus, who was torn limb from limb 
by the Bacchic rout ; and here Alcestis gave her life. 
Considering the intense and bitter rivalry that existed 
between Athens and Thebes during the whole of the 
classical period, it would be strange to find the Athenian 
playwrights so often taking legends of Thebes for the 
theme of their drama, were it not that it is always 
easier to focus the rays of romance on the horizon 
rather than on the well-known homeland. Turning from 
the Thebes of classical times, two pictures of the later 
life of the city have come down to us. The first dates 
from the second century before Christ and shows us 
the capital of Boeotia in its gay, turbulent everyday 
aspect, full of quarrelsome men and pleasing women. 

" In spite of its antiquity the streets are new, because 



THE AGE OF CHIVALRY 231 

as the histories tell us the city has been thrice razed 
to the ground on account of the morose and overbearing 
character of its inhabitants. It is excellent for the 
breeding of horses ; it is all well watered and green, 
and has more gardens than any other city in Greece. 
For two rivers flow through it, irrigating the plain below 
the city ; and water is brought from the Cadmea in 
underground conduits which were made of old, they 
say, by Cadmus. So much for the city. The inhabitants 
are high spirited and wonderfully sanguine, but rash, 
insolent, and overbearing, ready to come to blows with 
any man, be he citizen or stranger. As for justice, they 
set their face against it. Business disputes are settled 
not by reason but by fisticuffs, and the methods of the 
prize-ring are transferred to courts of justice. Hence 
lawsuits here last thirty years at the very least. For 
if a man opens his lips in public on the law's delay 
and does not thereupon take hasty leave of Bceotia 
he is waylaid by night and murdered by the persons 
who have no wish that lawsuits should come to an end. 
Murders are perpetrated on the most trifling pretexts. 
Such are the men as a whole, though some worthy, 
high-minded, respectable people are to be found among 
them. The women are the tallest, prettiest, and most 
graceful of all Greece. Their faces are so muffled up 
that only the eyes are seen. All of them dress in white 
and wear low purple shoes laced so as to show the 
bare feet. Their yellow hair is tied up in a knot on 
the top of the head. In society their manners are 
Sicyonian rather than Boeotian. They have pleasing 
voices, while the voices of the men are harsh and deep." 
So much for Dicaearchus. I quote from Frazer s trans- 
lation of the passage. 

The second picture shows the town in the hands of the 
gay Burgundians, who settled here in the thirteenth cen- 
tury. Thebes was then the centre of the silk industry, 



232 DAYS IN ATTICA 

and wealthy merchants from the East and from the 
West lived under the protection of that tower and 
enjoyed the glitter of the Latin chivalry or suffered from 
its strife. Here is a record of one of the summer 
days of Thebes. The year is 1294, and the occasion 
is the coming of age of Guy de la Roche, Duke of 
Athens and Thebes. " There came a day when the young 
Duke of Athens would take upon himself the order of 
knighthood, and he called the cortes of the whole 
country and commanded that on the day of St. John 
in June all the noblemen in his duchy should present 
themselves in the town of Thebes, where the Duke was 
to be knighted. He convoked also the prelates and ail 
other good people. Finally he made a proclamation 
throughout the Empire, in the Despotate,^ and in all 
Wallachia, that all men who wished to come there had 
only to present themselves, when they would receive 
from him gifts and graces. This great court was pro- 
claimed at least six months before its time of meeting. 
" At the time then, when the Duke called his full court, 
each one made haste to prepare beautiful clothes for 
himself and for his suite, and also to distribute them 
among his jongleurs in order that they might give lustre 
to his court. How shall I tell you of it ? The day 
of the great court arrived, and in all the court there 
was nobody more elegantly and more nobly dressed 
than Messire Boniface 2 and his company. He had a 
hundred candles bearing his arms. He borrowed the 
wherewithal to cover his expenses, pledging his pay in 
advance. How shall I tell it to you ? The feast began 
after a splendid fashion. When people had arrived in 
the great church where the Duke was to receive the 
order of chivalry, the Archbishop of Thebes celebrated 

^ Epirus. 

^ Son of the Lord of Verona. He had come penniless to Athens 
and had been taken into favour by the late Duke. 



1 



THE AGE OF CHIVALRY 233 

Mass and the arms of the Duke were placed upon the 
altar. Every one waited anxiously for the moment when 
the Duke would receive the order of knighthood, and 
they were all making a great to-do and supposing that 
the King of France and the Emperor must have been 
disputing for the honour of having the Duke receive 
knighthood of his hands. And at this moment, when 
they were all in suspense, he summoned Messire Boniface 
of Verona. He presented himself instantly, and the 
Duke said, ' Messire Boniface, sit here near the Arch- 
bishop, because I desire that you should dub us Knight.' 

" * Ah, my Lord ! ' replied Boniface, ^ what sayest 
thou ? Thou dost surely mock me.' * No, by our 
troth,' quoth the Duke, 'so do we wish it to be.' 
Then Boniface, seeing that the Duke spoke from his 
heart, came and stood near the Archbishop at the altar 
whereon lay the arms of the Duke and dubbed him 
a knight. Then the Duke said aloud before all the 
company, * Master Boniface, custom is that those who 
make men knights should make them presents too. 
Howsobeit, it is our will to do the contrary. Thou 
hast made us a knight, therefore we give thee from 
this moment 50,000 sols of revenue for thee and thine 
for ever, in castles and in goodly places and in freehold, 
to do therewith as thou wilt. We also give thee to 
wife the daughter of a certain baron whose hand is 
ours to bestow and who is lady of part of the island 
and city of Negropont.' " 

So writes Ramon Muntaner, with his gift for making 
fairy tales out of history. I am dependent for the 
translation from the extracts of the chronicle made by 
Mr. William Miller in his stirring account of the 
Latins in the Levant. 



CHAPTER X 

THE DARK AGES 

I 

TURKISH ATHENS 

THE Byzantine Room in the National Museum at 
Athens contains a number of picturesque and 
curious reUcs of the period of Turkish and 
Venetian rule. There are altar-cloths, vestments, chalices, 
glowing pictures on wood and dark metal-covered ikons. 
The influence of Venice is strongly marked in the 
embroideries and paintings. The Battle of Lepanto is 
set forth in great detail on a picture from the Church 
of Santa Maria della Vittoria in Cephalonia. To the 
right is the Turkish fleet with the crescents on its flags. 
Some of its ships are already on fire. There are shells 
bursting among them and some Turks are in the sea. 
It is evidently the moment of victory. The Christians 
are on the left, their flags displaying the double eagle of 
Austria, the lion of Venice, and the crossed keys of Rome. 
In the bottom left of the picture some Turks are brought 
as prisoners to Don John. The scene is evidently drawn 
from the description of an eye-witness and probably 
conveys much exact information. 

Beyond these few relics in the Museum, little visible 
is left of the period of Venetian occupation. It is an 
unfortunate paradox that the Venetians who championed 

234 



THE DARK AGES 235 

the cause of progress and enlightenment have left but 
one memorial in Athens itself, and that of a disastrously 
negative character. It was while Venice was besieging 
the Turks in the Acropolis in 1687 that the fatal shot 
was fired which caused the destruction of the Parthenon. 
Until that day the structure of the temple had remained 
in good preservation, though its ornament was partially 
damaged. The explosion caused by the cannonade of 
26th September tore away the roof and shattered the 
giant colonnades on each side. Nor can it be urged in 
plea that the destruction was wrought by a random shot. 
A deserter had informed the Venetian captain, Morosini, 
that the Turks were using the Parthenon as their powder- 
magazine, and it was in the hope of causing an explosion 
that the Venetian guns were trained on to it. Though 
Morosini was barbarian enough to sanction ^ the bom- 
bardment of the Parthenon, he was still enough of a 
connoisseur in matters of art to covet the marble horses 
from the chariot of Athena in the West pediment. By 
his orders these were removed from their places. Un- 
happily as they were being lowered the ropes gave way 
and the statues were dashed into fragments. The greed 
of the collector no less than the wantonness of the 
soldier is thus answerable for the destruction of the most 
perfect monument of Greek art. Having failed to secure 
the horses, Morosini carried to Venice three of the 
famous Athenian lions. The great lion from the Piraeus, 
whose runic inscription told that it was set up by the 
Northmen, the lion that crouched in the plain near the 
temple of Theseus,^ and a lioness of Hymettan marble, 
were all carried to Venice and may still be seen guarding 
the arsenal there. 

' It was Count Konigsmark of Westphalia who actually initiated 
the attack. 

' See plan of Athens by the Capuchins, 1670, given by Laborde, 
i.78. 



236 DAYS IN ATTICA 

The explosion in the Parthenon seems to have given 
rise to the idea that the whole of Athens was laid low. 
Chandler and other subsequent travellers are almost 
naive in their astonishment at finding any of the 
buildings of antiquity above ground. 

Except during the brief spell, 1687-1715, while Venice 
occupied Athens, the town was under Turkish rule from 
1453 to 182 1. These centuries were to Athens her real 
** Dark Ages,'' darker even than the slow period of decline 
under Byzantine rule. For now she was not only dead, 
but forgotten. Even her name had vanished. The 
Piraeus was known only as Porto Leone, called after 
the marble lion that Morosini carried to Venice. The 
name of Athens became corrupted past recognition. 
William Lithgow, who visited the town in 1609, records 
its name as Salenos. Wheler, in the same century, more 
accurately gives the form Settines, with the following 
explanation : " They " (the inhabitants) " still call the 
city 'A3^Tjv??, which they pronounce ' Athini.' Therefore I 
wonder our modern geographers have been no better 
informed concerning so eminent a place, calling it 
corruptly in our maps, sometimes Saithenes, otherwise 
Setines or Satina, etc., deceived, as I have before ob- 
served, by the ignorant seamen who, hearing the Greeks 
say eig T 'A^TjvLVy they pronounce ' Stin Athini,' and have 
found those barbarous names out of their own brains." 

As her name had vanished from the map of Europe, 
so also it was blotted out from history. The glories of 
the Renaissance, the struggles of the Reformation, the 
rise and fall of dynasties, the whole course of history 
while modern Europe was in the making, raised no echo 
in her mountains. The tide of commerce sent no ripple 
to her shores. The great harbour of the Piraeus remained 
empty of all save a few fishing craft or the occasional 
hull of a coasting vessel bearing an inquisitive traveller 
who wished to see for himself the reported desertion and 



THE DARK AGES 237 

destruction of that which had been Athens. It is the 
records of these chance visitors that alone throw Hght 
on her condition in this time of isolation ; thanks to 
them the Dark Ages are brightened with gleams of colour. 

There is William Lithgow, of the boisterous buccaneer- 
ing type, inaccurate in his geography and terrifying in 
his adventures. His books give pictures of the author 
" beset with six murderers in Moldavia " ; " in irons at the 
Governor's palace at Malaga," and again "in the Racke 
at Malaga." His account of Athens is probably fairly 
reliable since he does not trouble to be romantic here. 
He merely notes the smallness of the town and the 
courteous hospitality of its inhabitants. He is the 
type of traveller whose own personality looms large, 
and the countries through which he travels are but a 
picturesque background against which he may pose. 
Almost his contemporary in travel comes Sandys, who 
made his Eastern tour in 1610, seeking no "rare adven- 
tures " such as Lithgow's, but delighting to study the ways 
and customs of the country-folk, the herbage and scenery 
of the country. He visits Chios and is delighted with 
the gay spirit of the Greeks even under Turkish mis- 
government. "The inhabitants for the most part are 
Turkes and Grecians, these living in command, and 
loosely : the other husbanding the earth, and exceeding 
them infinitely in number. They are in a manner 
released of their thraldome, in that they are insensible 
of it : well meriting the name of Merry Greeks, when 
their leisure will tolerate. Never Sunday or holy day 
passes without some publicke meeting or other : where 
intermixed with women they dance out the day, and with 
full crownd cups strengthen their joUitie. The streets 
do almost all the night long partake of their musicke." 

De la Guilletiere (1676) claims that he visited Greece after 
two years' warfare in Hungary and four years' slavery in 
Barbary. These had so " much diminished the ardent 






238 DAYS IN ATTICA 

passion for travel which was once the mortal malady of 
his spirit " that the enthusiasm of the party of savants 
whom he accompanies becomes irksome to him and he 
longs "only to sleep for a year or two." The pathos 
of this falls flat when we discover that the book is not 
really written by the ex-slave but by his stay-at-home 
brother. 

Then there is Babin, the gentle French priest who 
prefers the cities to wild country travel, and has left us a 
careful description of all he saw in Athens (1674). 

There is Wheler, the English Royalist, perhaps the first 
traveller to visit Attica in a truly scientific spirit (1682). 
His records are full and accurate, while the personalities 
and adventures of his journey are lightly passed over. 
With him went Dr. Spon, of Ljrons. The two savant^ 
each published an account of his travels, and with 
exquisite politeness placed the name of his fellow- 
traveller as joint author on the title-page. The tw^o 
accounts are not, however, identical, and it is necessary 
to distinguish between the volume by Spon and Wheler, 
which was published in French and afterwards trans- 
lated, and that by Wheler and Spon, which was published 
in English and then translated into French. Wheler's 
book was produced some years after the French account 
by Spon, and he prides himself on his drawings of plants 
and on his numerous maps. The little engravings are 
certainly delightful. 

Travel in the near East was popular from this time 
onward. There is gossip as well as scholarship in 
Chandler, who travelled in 1765 on behalf of the Society 
of Dilettanti and took with him draughtsmen " to 
make plans, measures, drawings, and copy inscriptions." 
That he did not confine himself to the antiquities of 
Athens is shown by the following minute description 
of the Greek belle at home, in which he catalogues her 
charms as carefully as if he were making an inventory 
for his society : — 



THE DARK AGES 239 

"The Greek will sometimes admit a traveller into his 
gynecceum, or the apartment of his women. There the 
girl, like Thetis, treading on a soft carpet, has her white 
and delicate feet naked ; the nails tinged with red. Her 
trowsers, which in winter are of red cloth and in summer 
of fine calico or thin gauze, descend from the hip to the 
ankle, hanging loosely about her limbs ; the lower portion 
embroidered with flowers and appearing beneath the 
shift, which has the sleeves wide and open, and the 
sleeves and edges curiously adorned with needlew^ork. 
Her vest is of silk, fitted exactly to the form of the bosom 
and the shape of the body which it rather covers than con- 
ceals, and is shorter than the shift. The sleeves button 
occasionally to the hand, and are lined with red or 
yellow satin. A rich zone encompasses her waist, and is 
fastened before by clasps of silver gilded or of gold set 
with precious stones. Over the vest is a robe, in summer 
lined with ermine and in cold weather with fur. The 
head-dres5 is a skull-cap, red or green, with pearls ; a 
stay under the chin and a yellow forehead cloth. She 
has bracelets of gold on her wrists, and, like Aurora, is 
rosy-fingered, the tips being stained. Her necklace is a 
string of Zechins, a species of gold coin, or of the pieces 
called Byzantines. At her cheeks is a lock of hair made 
to curl towards the face ; and down her back falls a pro- 
fusion of tresses, spreading over her shoulders. Much 
time is consumed in combing and braiding the hair after 
bathing, and at the greater festivals in enriching and 
powdering it with small bits of silver gilded, resembling 
a violin in shape and woven in at regular distances. She 
is painted blue round the eyes ; and the insides of the 
sockets, with the edges on which the lashes grow, are 
tinged with black." 

There is a picture of the Maid of Athens to whom 
Byron's pretty verses were addressed. It shows her in 
this same Greek dress, and a very becoming fashion it 
must have been. 



240 DAYS IN ATTICA 

In the early nineteenth century, besides Gell, who con- 
tinued Chandler's work, there is that whole memorable 
group of young travellers, Byron, Hobhouse, Gait, and 
Dodwell, whose descriptions of Greece roused England 
to share their enthusiasm, and many others whose dusty 
journals are found in the libraries of the period. These 
books are always worth opening. Among minute descrip- 
tions of places visited and tedious collections of classical 
quotations there lurk gems of humour and insight, 
romantic incidents, and personal experiences. This was 
the period when every " young man of parts " was 
expected to complete his education by a tour in Europe, 
and Byron's popularity led many to imitate him by turn- 
ing their steps to the Turkish Empire. Not all, however, 
showed Byron's insight into the political condition of 
Greece. It was easier to laugh at her obvious degrada- 
tion than to see any hope for her future greatness. 
Typical of this light-hearted attitude of scorn are the 
amusing journals of Gait, a facetious young Scot who 
gained some fame as a novelist. 

In reading Byron's letters from Athens it is rather a 
shock to find that while sympathizing with the Greeks as 
a nation it was the Romantic rather than the Classical 
Greece that appealed to him. He paid two visits here as 
a young man, first in the winter and afterwards in the 
summer of 1810. On neither occasion do his published 
letters mention the classical buildings on the Acropolis. 
He wrote magnificent poetry about the sunset, but it was 
the landscape rather than the temples that he immortalized. 
" Place me on Sunium's marbled steep," he sings ; and 
when his wish has been fulfilled it is his own name that 
he cuts on one of those immortal Doric columns, while 
the fallen columns of the temple to Jupiter Olympus are 
mentioned chiefly as a convenient seat. 

The travellers of this time either lodged with their 
Consul or with the hospitable brothers in the Capuchin 



THE DARK AGES 241 

convent into which has been built the Monument of 
Lysicrates (see p. i6i). There was no suitable "hostelry" 
in the town, probably nothing more than a Turkish 
khan. The " Catholic missionaries " were glad to add 
to their funds by putting up travellers and the travellers 
also were pleased to date their letters and journals from 
the "Lantern of Demosthenes" (as the Monument of 
Lysicrates was then called). It made a small but romantic 
study, that little circular room with its roof of marble 
laurel leaves. Gait makes merry over the rusty gates out- 
side the convent giving way at a touch of " his Reverence's 
toe." Dodwell interrupts his learned disquisitions on 
flora, fauna, and buildings to relate the exciting story of 
the fugitive Disdar whom he sheltered for weeks in his 
own room at the Capuchin convent. The story goes 
thus : — 

When Dodwell visited the Acropolis he was scornfully 
received by the Governor, a haughty man who was 
" frequently seen galloping through the streets of Athens 
and endangering the lives and limbs of the passengers. 
The Disdar (as he was called) was easily distinguished 
at a distance, as he was mounted on a white horse with 
its tail and mane dyed of an orange colour and was 
attended by other horsemen who played on the violin 
when they rode." This outrageous behaviour tended to 
make him unpopular among the quiet and dignified 
Turkish citizens, but they bore with him until a more 
scandalous proceeding brought their fury to a climax. 
Like Actaeon he violated the privacy of Diana and 
peeped at the Turkish ladies in their enjoyment of the 
public bath. After this he was forced to fly for his life. 
After taking refuge in the islands of ^©gina and Hydra 
he returned to Athens and threw himself upon the mercy 
of the Catholic convent. "Night had closed the 
entrance of the monastery, and we had all retired to our 
apartments for repose, when we were suddenly alarmed 



242 DAYS IN ATTICA 

by a loud rapping at the gate. A stranger in the street, 
in the tone of earnest supplication and of deep distress, 
implored an immediate admission within the sacred 
walls. But as the circumstances were so singular and 
the interruption so extraordinary we thought it right to 
arm ourselves before we ventured to unbar the door. 
This was no sooner accomplished than a tall figure made 
his appearance, whose face was muffled up in the folds 
of his mantle, which he no sooner developed, than the 
Disdar, pale as a culprit and humble as a mendicant, 
presented himself to our astonished sight ! He kissed 
the beard of the prior; and with abject servility implored 
asylum in the convent. But the wary Capuchin, not 
daring to risk the consequence of a discovery, repressed 
the compassion which he felt, and refused the favour 
which was so vehemently urged. The Disdar then had 
recourse to me, forgetting the little civility with which he 
had treated me when he commanded the Acropolis. 
But he now besought my compassion in a manner so 
humble and affecting that I interested myself unfeignedly 
in his behalf ; and after some difficulty, obtained the 
permission of Father Urban, to conceal him in one of 
my apartments, where he was suffered to remain till I 
left Athens." The next act in this drama begins with the 
Disdar warmly entreating Dodwell to allow him a sight 
of his wife and children. After some difficulty it is 
arranged that Dodwell shall lead them to the eastern 
battlement of the Acropolis while the Disdar watched 
for them with a telescope from the window of the 
convent ! Kind Dodwell brings the wife to that which 
we now know as the Belvedere Bastion and from here 
she sees below her and perhaps a quarter of a mile away 
her husband with the telescope at his eye. ''This un- 
expected sight of one whom she appears to have tenderly 
loved was too much for her natural, unaffected sensibility. 
She uttered a scream of joy and fainted in my arms." 



THE DARK AGES 243 

Such adventures were there for travellers in the good 
days of old. 

Quite apart from all recollections of Dodwell and the 
Disdar's wife, this Belvedere Bastion is a fine place for 
observation. It crowns the scarped cliff of the Eastern 
end of the Acropolis and gives a bird's-eye view of the 
brown-tiled roofs of Turkish Athens. Nothing could be 
more striking than the contrast between the modern 
town with its broad streets laid out at right angles, 
bordered with high white houses, and this older town 
with crooked shady lanes and low houses built each 
around its own courtyard garden. It was in this 
Turkish town that Finlay the historian and General 
Church lived side by side, disappointed Philhellenes, who 
spent their old age lecturing the country that they had 
tried to serve. General Church's house is marked by a 
square tower, and beside it Finlay's garden has two 
conspicuous palm-trees. The houses are easier to find 
in a bird's-eye view from the Acropolis than on foot, 
for these winding streets bordered with high walls 
become a labyrinth when one is down among them. 

Whatever faults the Turks possessed they knew how 
to make their homes pleasant. Fountains and greenery 
mark their old haunts. The Botanic Gardens that now 
lie on the outskirts of the town on the road to Eleusis 
were originally the residence of the Vaivode. The villa 
that Queen Amalia afterwards cultivated was first the 
country home of a wealthy Moslem. The gardenlike 
suburb of Cephissia was the creation of Turkish land- 
owners. The old town itself had many cypresses and 
palms, and old pictures show some of the narrow lanes 
covered with a trelliswork of vines. At one time there 
was also a number of fountains throughout the town. 
Unfortunately Greek patriotism found even these relics of 
Turkish rule hateful and they are now destroyed. 

The old engravings of the seventeenth and eighteenth 



244 



DAYS IN ATTICA 



centuries show Athens as a small group of houses clus- 
tered under the Acropolis, of which the most conspicuous 
feature is the high Prankish tower on the Propylaea. 
Mosques and minarets and occasional trees beautify the 
otherwise insignificant little town. The descriptions of 
travellers give. the same impression. The town has so 
far shrunk back from the old walls that corn is now 
reaped within the line of the city. Gait in 1810 says : '*I 
cannot describe the modern city of Athens in fewer words 
than by saying that it looks as if two or three ill-built 
villages had been rudely swept together at the foot of the 
North side of the Acropolis and enclosed by a garden 
wall three or four miles in circumference." A second 
town was crowded among the old buildings on the 
Acropolis. Here the garrison and their families lived. 
The Governor also had his residence here, and the 
Erechtheum served as his harem. These famihes living 
on the Acropolis were known as the Castriotes. They 
were much pitied by their neighbours in the town below. 
Water was scarce and the situation said to be too "airy." 
The classical monuments around them counted for less 
than nothing, except when the marble fragments could 
be turned to practical uses. Here on the Belvedere 
Bastion, among a heap of broken carvings bearing 
classical or Byzantine designs, one comes across an Ionic 
capital that has once served as a washing-trough. A 
pool is hollowed out at one end and the remainder given 
a convenient slope on which the hnen could be rubbed 
with stones. No doubt these Castriotes had household 
furniture made largely of marble fragments, as in the 
classical sites to-day where one sees fodder stored in a 
sarcophagus and a column base used as a table. 

The Englishman on his grand tour found it none too 
easy to visit the Acropolis and identify the old buildings. 
The old journals tell us how it was managed. First the 
traveller had to make a gift of tea and sugar to the 



THE DARK AGES 245 

Governor. This done, he passed the green-turbaned 
sentinel smoking at the entrance and strode over the 
ancient Propylaea where the earth and fallen stones had 
risen as high as the ancient doorway. The sites here 
were covered with "rubbish and mean walls." Threading 
his way among the small houses he would recognize the 
Parthenon on his right, with minaret and cupola showing 
that it was now used as a mosque, and on his left the 
darkened front of the Erechtheum, but nothing else was 
visible to remind him of the glorious days of old. The 
rest of the hill-top was covered with small dwelling- 
houses. Descending to the lower town he would find 
the narrow and irregular streets which Hobhouse 
describes, having " a raised causeway on both sides so 
broad as to contract the middle of the street into a kind 
of dirty gutter." These streets were strewn with refuse 
from the olive-press, which served the inhabitants for 
fuel. The bazaars we are told were "far from well- 
furnished," could not take rank in fact with the cheerful 
commercial quarter of wealthier cities. The silence 
struck the traveller strangely. There was no sound of 
wheels or horses' hoofs. The slippered tread of the 
Oriental fell without noise. The coffee-houses were full 
of Turks playing at draughts or chess, while the hard- 
working Greek hurried nimbly by. If the traveller 
trusted himself outside the town and ventured as far 
afield as the banks of the Ilissus he would find himself 
looked upon as a hardy adventurer. Witches haunted 
the Stadium, especially the cavern under the hill that was 
once included in its structure. Hobhouse was brought 
here by a guide who told him that these witches had 
often been seen " during a midnight storm, skimming off 
the foam of the sea where it rolls against the long, pebbley 
beach near the ancient port of Phalerus." Gait tells us 
that "on the first evening of the new moon young girls 
put honey, salt, and bread on a plate which they leave 



246 DAYS IN ATTICA 

on the bank of the Ilissus near the Stadium, muttering 
some ancient words of which the meaning has been 
forgotten, but which are to the effect that fate may send 
them a pretty young man." 

Every mention of this region shows that it was 
regarded as mysterious and remote. The Piraeus of 
those days seems also to have been quite in the wilds. 
"A few barks with their long tops bearing the furled sail 
at the mast-head were moored close to the land ; on the 
shore stood a dirty hovel dignified with the name of 
warehouse ; a muddy marsh extended towards the left ; 
there a few cranes seeking their scanty food interrupted 
now and then the heavy silence with the flapping of their 
wings." Such is the scene of desolation noted by a 
classical scholar of the early nineteenth century. There 
was a lake and a marsh two and a half miles in length 
between the port and the town. It seems to have been 
the usual thing for the young Englishman who came 
here to take his gun and go after the wild turkeys that 
abounded. In the harbour there was seldom a ship, and 
eight small houses on the edge of the shore represented 
what is now the busy port of Piraeus. Hobhouse is no 
scoffer, and without irony he suggests that Athens will 
soon be provided with a tavern. He seems, however, to 
be indulging in satire when he adds " a few more years 
may furnish the Piraeus with all the accommodations 
of a fashionable watering-place." 

As far as the actual condition of the people was con- 
cerned, Athens seems to have suffered equally under her 
Venetian and under her Ottoman masters. The hand of 
the Turk was perhaps the heaviest, yet he maintained 
better internal order and his friendly attitude to the 
Greek Church contrasted favourably with the jealousy 
shown towards it by Venetian Catholicism. During the 
earlier centuries of Turkish rule it was more stupidity 
than cruelty from which Greece had to suffer. The 



THE DARK AGES 247 

Turk's shortsighted trade regulations crippled her com- 
merce as his heavy taxation discouraged her industry. 
In some ways Greece suffered less from fiscal exaction 
than other provinces under Turkish rule, yet the fact 
remains that during the four centuries of Ottoman 
occupation the economic condition of Greece steadily 
declined in spite of all her rich natural resources. 

The social tyrannies of the Turk were those that 
counted most heavily against him when the day of 
reckoning came. A family whose daughter had been 
forced into a Turkish harem remembered the insult for 
generations. The yearly tribute of Christian children 
taken from their parents and carried off to Constanti- 
nople to swell the ranks of the Janissaries was an evil the 
memory of which never cooled, though the custom was 
discontinued in the seventeenth century. Eton's Survey 
of the Turkish Empire in the end of the eighteenth 
century gives instances of the exasperating petty tyrannies 
that were harder to bear than cruelty. A Christian on 
horseback must dismount as soon as he came in sight of 
a Turk. He must wear clothes of dark colours, slippers 
of dark colour, and must paint his house black or brown. 
In pictures of this date the broad red sash and red boots 
denote the Turk as unmistakably as his fez. Bishops 
and other ecclesiastics were forbidden to wear the 
broad-brimmed hats which custom had assigned them. 
Hence the peculiar brimless hats still worn by the Greek 
clergy. 

To-day these frivolous regulations make us smile, but 
to the Greek any breach in their observance was punish- 
able with death. And for all this tyranny the Turks were 
not able to give Greece security from her enemies. 
Brigands in the mountains and pirates at sea helped to 
deprive the peasants of the few possessions their masters 
had left them. If a man had saved a little money he 
must bury it. If he wished to escape suspicion he must 



248 DAYS IN ATTICA 

avoid the appearance of living in easy circumstances. 
Wheler speaks of the ravages of the Corsairs causing 
such loss to the town of Athens that at last the citizens 
having no walls were obliged to build barriers and gates 
across all roads leading from the town to the sea. Down 
to the last the Turk refused to see that his own interests 
suffered from this impoverishment of the Greek race. 
Blind as he was to the commercial and agricultural pos- 
sibilities of the country he ruled, it was not to be expected 
that he would recognize the value — even the monetary 
value — of the art treasures of Athens. Not only the 
Parthenon, but also apparently the Erechtheum, the 
Pinakotheke, and the Nike temple, all served as powder- 
magazines at one time or another. The Nike temple 
even had a house built over its roof, and here in the 
eighteenth century the Governor of the Acropolis lived 
until the explosion of the magazine beneath caused the 
destruction of himself and his family. In 1759 the Vai- 
vode of Athens, while building the mosque in the bazaar, 
carried off the marbles from the old Metropolitan Church 
and even blew up a couple of columns of Hadrian's 
Stoa that happened to encroach on the ground-plan of 
his building. Travellers found that it was often danger- 
ous to offer a Turk money for any relic of antiquity. 
Incapable of understanding that an object of art could 
be valued for its own sake, the owner at once assumed 
that the bidder must know of hidden treasure inside it, 
and under this insane belief many old marbles seem to 
have been destroyed. 

Knowing that the Turks were incapable of valuing the 
treasures of art, Europeans who did value them scrambled 
for the spoil. We have seen how Morosini treated the 
sculptures on the Parthenon, and if Lord Elgin's ravages 
are less blameworthy it is only because they were more 
successful. He knew at any rate how to cherish the 
treasures he removed. It is easy to abuse his memory 



THE DARK AGES 249 

and to quote the inscription on the Parthenon : " Quod 
non fecerunt Gothi hoc fecerunt Scoti " ; but it must be 
remembered that in his day the question was not whether 
the British Museum or an Athenian museum should hold 
them, but rather whether they should be looted by an 
enlightened or an unenlightened thief. 

There were plenty of others ready to take what he left. 
As early as the seventeenth century noblemen in England 
had their agents collecting marbles and bronzes for them 
in Italy and Greece. Quite recently there has come to 
light in the Bodleian Library an amusing memorandum 
jotted down for the guidance of such an agent. Although 
unsigned, the notes seem to have been made by a certain 
William Petty, who collected a great number of art 
treasures for the Earl of Arundel. We know that Sir 
Thomas Roe was serving the Duke of Buckingham in 
the same capacity at the same time. 

Petty's notes begin abruptly : "The things to be sought 
for bee these followinge : Statues clothed and naked but 
the naked ones are of greatest value. Heads of all sorts 
that can be found ; Marbles carved with halfe-round 
figures which are called Basso Relevo ; Pili of marble 
histored, the which are like trought of marble carved 
with figures. . . . Likewise Beasts of all kinds for Tombs 
and Sepulchers. . . . All things of Brass worke that can 
be found as Statues, Heads, Peeces of Basso Relevo, and 
likewise all little figures in Brass, or Lampes, Vazes, 
Instruments for sacrifice, medalls or whatsoever else can 
be gotten if they be of metal are of great value." He 
then goes on to discuss the places where such things are 
likely to be discovered, and shows amazing insight by 
suggesting those very places that have most repaid the 
digger : Olympia, Delphi, Delos, Ephesus, Pergamum. 
Then follows practical suggestions of great wile : " He 
that is imployed must alwaies weare poore apparrell for 
by that meanes the Turks will imagine the things he seeks 



250 DAYS IN ATTICA 

for to be of no great estimacon. He must never be 
without great store of tobacco and English knives to 
present the Turks withal, who are Governors of places 
and other Offices with whom he shall have to doe : for 
this small presents together with his show of povertie 
will save him from manie troubles which otherwise might 
happen. The men that he imployes to digg he must pay 
by the daie, and if he meet with anie Statues or Colossus 
too great to be carry ed away whole he must imploy men 
to saw it asunder with iron sawes and sharps sand!' ^ 

After reading directions such as these Lord Elgin 
begins to appear in a rather different light. 

The Turks seem to have been insanely jealous of 
such monuments as escaped the spoiler's hand. The 
'^Theseion/' by no means one of the most beautiful of 
Greek temples, is one that stands almost intact even at 
the present day. Babin tells us that it was too far from 
the town to be useful as a mosque, but the Turks did not 
like the Christians "to say their prayers in so magnificent 
a church." "The iron doors are never opened except 
perhaps on St. George's Day " " when the lock is turned 
with a silver key which the Greeks had to give to the 
Turks in order to obtain permission to use the church 
at all." Another legend says that the Turks used to ride 
their horses up and down the steps in order to defile 
the temple-church for the Christians. 

II 

THE ATHENS OF KING OTHO 

In the Royal Gardens 

No one really knows Athens until he has explored the 

beauties of the great garden behind the Palace. There 

is no place quite like it. It might perhaps be compared 

^ For the full text see a paper by Miss R. Poole in the Classical 
Review, June, 1912. 



THE DARK AGES 251 

with Count Antonio's garden at Biskra, but whereas from 
there the green vistas frame a distance of desert, here the 
koukunaria pines break their ranks to show the white 
columns of the Olympieum and the sea behind. This 
garden is open to the pubHc for two afternoons in the 
week, and as far as one can see the king's kindness is 
not abused. There are spaces beneath the Palace windows 
where no one thinks of venturing, and the garden is large 
enough to absorb a good number of visitors without 
appearing to have any one in it. There are wooded 
solitudes carpeted with periwinkle or amaranth ; there 
are broad gravel-walks and flower-beds gay with tulip 
and anemone. In another part of the garden are acres 
of dark orange-trees hanging their lamps of winter gold, 
and underneath the orange-trees are thick borders of 
violets, whose leaves scent the air even when there are 
no flowers. In April, when the violets are out and the 
orange-trees in flower, it is like a fragrant paradise of 
the Arabian Nights. Towards the bottom of the garden 
the trees increase in size. Here are groups of pines and 
giant cypresses. There are tall palms, euonymus, and 
bay, and a hundred other evergreens, and among them 
a few bare planes. Over the ground and up the tree- 
trunks the ivy riots. The frail monthly rose hangs in 
garlands from tree to tree and the banksia tumbles in 
cataracts of yellow foam down the dark spire of a monster 
cypress. This profusion of creepers, contrasting with the 
trim orderliness of the walks where not a leaf or weed 
is seen, gives the garden a peculiar charm. 

There are other flowers here too ; little girls and boys 
with olive skins and dark eyes ; little diplomatic babies 
in white perambulators, or a blue-smocked English child 
from the favoured nurseries that are allowed to use this 
paradise as their daily playground. The garden is large 
and the children are few. Those who know their special 
haunts may find them by the pond of goldfish or under 



252 DAYS IN ATTICA 

the plumbago pergola. For the most part they are 
invisible and only faintly, deliciously audible. 

This garden is a token of what can be done in Athens 
by a plentiful use of water. The light soil has still some 
magic fertility that makes everything grow luxuriantly — 
everything at least that can count on regular irrigation. 

When King Otho came here as a boy with his girl- 
bride, they lived in the little house beside the Palace, now 
used for the guards in their white fustanellas. Their 
quarters were small and hardly royal, but they consoled 
themselves with laying out this beautiful garden, which 
remains as the most amiable landmark of their rule. One 
gets a sufficiently vivid idea of the Athens of King Otho in 
the letters of Sir Thomas Wyse, who was for many years 
the English minister there. They are edited by his niece, 
who prefaces the volume with her own picturesque 
impressions of Athens in the forties. To mark the new 
era of freedom the Albanian dress had been adopted as 
the national costume. The King himself always wore 
this and the Queen wore the costume of a Greek lady. 
The streets of the town were full of the PalikarSj the 
chieftains who had fought for Greece and now strode 
about with the air of conquerors, with their hair hanging 
in long ringlets, and curling moustachios such as one 
learns to know in the portrait gallery at the Polytechnic 
Museum. With short jackets heavily embroidered with 
gold, swinging white kilts, and broad rolls of coloured 
cloth round their loins, these free Greeks did their utmost 
to mark the contrast between the new times and those 
old days when the subject population walked humbly 
in sad colours. 

Elements of disorder these Palikars undoubtedly were. 
For the most part they had once been brigands. They 
had fought bravely during the war, but now finding 
themselves without employment they were rapidly 
lapsing into their old courses. Nevertheless the Govern- 



THE DARK AGES 253 

ment and especially the King and Queen still regarded 
them as a power in the state, and the most lawless were 
the most petted. The descriptions left by Sir Thomas 
Wyse remind us of the manners of the Highland Chiefs 
in Edinburgh in the eighteenth century : " No one who 
saw Theodore Grivas can ever forget the sight. With 
a wild, audacious countenance, defiant of all around, 
wearing the handsomest of Greek dresses, covered with 
gold and embroidery, his great pride was to strut up and 
down the Patissia Road followed by ten or eleven rude 
savage-looking retainers." 

The streets of Athens were still ill-paved and ill- 
lighted. Those who went out after dark must take a 
servant to carry a lantern before them to guide them 
over the broken roads. The size of the lantern was 
carefully proportioned to the importance of its owner, 
and after a court ball or any special function the streets 
were brilliant with the large horned lights of ministers 
and officials. At this time building was beginning, 
though the town grew but slowly. The first Palace 
was, as we have seen, a very humble one. Queen Amalia 
was a great gardener, and to-day the town rejoices in 
many groves originally planted by her wish. 

Many strangers came to settle in Athens at this time, 
attracted to the country mostly for sentimental reasons. 
The foreign capital that they brought into the impover- 
ished country was welcome, and their houses are 
still visible in Athens and the neighbourhood. The 
historian Finlay bought an estate on the eastern slopes 
of Deceleia, but like many others at this time he found 
country life impossible, owing to the disorderly state of 
the country. His house can still be seen on the left-hand 
side of the railway as one journeys to Chalcis. 

The Duchess of Plaisance was another well-known 
figure. A Frenchwoman, born in Philadelphia, she had 
married one of Napoleon's first ministers, and after her 



254 DAYS IN ATTICA 

husband's death she came to Athens as a wealthy widow. 
Her enthusiasm for the Greek nation led her to adopt 
a kind of classical Greek costume, and she was often 
seen out driving with a large white veil over her head, 
her draperies fastened on the shoulder with a fibula, 
and a fluffy cream-coloured dog stretched on the seat 
opposite to her. Her passion for Greece was equalled 
only by her fear of death, and she held the common 
superstition that so long as she could have some piece 
of building on hand death would be averted. To this 
strange fancy is due the number of houses begun by her 
but left unfinished, for the moment of completion was 
in her eyes the moment of danger. She built two 
large houses on Pentelicus and on Hymettus, and a villa 
on the Cephissia Road, now used as barracks, was once 
hers. At Chalandri she built a public washing-place 
to show her gratitude to the peasants there, who once 
saved her from brigands. 

The Cephissia Road is the great artery leading from 
Athens to the hill regions round Pentelicus. As it leaves 
the town it is bordered with royal palaces, foreign lega- 
tions, and the houses of wealthy Athenians. A little 
further out the road is lined with soldiers' barracks. 
The first of these that you pass on the right-hand 
side was the villa built by the Duchess of Plaisance. 
Designed in the Italian style with deep recessed arcades, 
it must have been a charming home when set round with 
grass and flowers and trees. The word Ilissia written 
in large letters over its beautiful arched gateway was 
meant to usher us into a paradise on the banks of the 
Ilissus. Even to-day, with its trodden courtyard filled 
with the litter of artillery barracks, it keeps something 
of its original charm. 



CHAPTER XI 
MODERN ATHENS 

ACITY of whiteness and brightness. A city of 
sun and wind, of mountain freshness, and dazzling, 
sun-dried air. This is how Athens strikes the 
traveller from northern lands. For the city that first 
greets him is the modern Athens with its broad, straight, 
shadeless streets, its blocks of high white houses geo- 
metrically arranged, and its open squares filled with 
orange-trees and date-palms. The old town that lies 
tucked away between Hermes Street and the Acropolis 
has to be discovered later. With its winding shady 
lanes, low houses, windowless to the street, and pleasant 
hidden courtyards, Turkish Athens seems like a town 
apart. To step across the street that divides it from the 
new town is to step back a century into the world of 
Byron and Hobhouse and Cochrane and Church. 

Athens, the modern town, may lack romance, but 
instead she has her own gaiety and charm. The city 
is still in her first vigorous youth. She is still divided 
between contradictory aspirations. On the one hand 
she strives to renew the glories of ancient Hellas, while 
on the other she sees herself the Paris of the East, " le 
petit Paris," as Athenians affectionately call her. Nor 
are these ideals eventually irreconcilable. Why should 
not Athens borrow the shady boulevards and gay squares 
of Paris, without sacrificing her Hellenic traditions ? 
Though the reconciliation has not yet been attained, 

255 



256 DAYS IN ATTICA 

much has already been accomplished. Think of her 
as she was in the middle of the last century — *'a 
rickety agglomeration of larger and smaller huts" is 
the epithet bestowed on her by one traveller of King 
Otho's time. In two generations she has grown from 
a mere nothing to the flourishing modern city of to- 
day. The rapidity of her growth explains the contrast 
between the evident prosperity of the town and the 
marked deficiencies of public convenience. Obvious 
reforms, such as a better water supply and better roads 
are bound to be accomplished shortly if no misfortune 
interrupts the course of tranquil development. In ap- 
pearance also Athens is still unfinished. The symmetry 
of the principal streets is marred by the building that 
is perpetually going forward ; and is anything more 
unsightly than the processes of modern building ? Grant 
that no political jealousy interferes with the scheme of 
the new railway to Salonika, it will link Athens to the 
continental system, and then the stream of travellers to 
the Far East, who now pour across Europe to Naples or 
Brindisi, may well prefer to shorten their sea voyage by 
taking the train to Athens and embarking at Piraeus. 

Nor is progress to be deplored on sentimental grounds. 
The Acropolis lifts its treasures above the reach of all 
modern improvements. A high standard of comfort 
and efficiency in the modern town will not render 
the traveller less able to appreciate the glory of the 
ruins. It is impossible for new Athens ever to have 
that flavour of miscellaneous antiquity which charms 
in Rome. Therefore, since she must remain modern, 
let her modernity be of the best. 

Think of the joy of a town where coal is dear and 
marble is cheap. The main roads are now bordered 
with fine houses of white stucco, a paste made of 
powered marble and quite different from the gloomy 
stucco of English towns. Their balconies, porticoes, 



MODERN ATHENS 257 

and wide entrance-stairs shine with Pentelic marble. 
Instead of the unhappy-looking gardens that fringe our 
English towns these Athenian villas are surrounded by 
deep groves of cypress, acacia, pepper, and orange-trees. 
Wherever water is to be had trees and flowers grow 
luxuriantly. The Royal Garden has set a high standard 
for its neighbours. 

Down the broad avenues pepper-trees have been 
planted. Unfortunately these trees cast their leaves 
in the spring and look most dishevelled in the tourist 
season. Through the winter their feathery green 
branches and tiny red berries turn the boulevards into 
groves. Their loveliness inspired Isidora Duncan, the 
American dancer, to an impromptu performance one 
fine winter day, and I am continually grateful for the 
memory of her white draperies whirling light-heartedly 
down the long avenue before what was then the Crown 
Prince's Palace. 

The wealth of marble shows, too, in the many public 
buildings which patriotic Greeks have given to their town 
during the last generation : the University with its 
shining figures of Apollo and Athena ; the Library with 
its outside staircase sweeping down in a unique and 
delightful curve ; the Zappeion, a large exhibition 
building set in its own new public garden ; and the long 
perspective of the marble Stadium showing white among 
the young plantations on Ardettus. 

The creamy buildings, the gardens, the vistas of sea 
and hills — these are the features that give modern Athens 
her charm. And to these must be added the intoxicating 
air, the continual scent of orange-blossom and mimosa 
wafted from hidden groves, the gaiety of troops and bugles, 
not to speak of the blue and silver liveries on the royal 
carriages and the stir around the brilliant little court. 
There are young princes married to famous beauties 
from the courts of Europe, and there is always the 



258 DAYS IN ATTICA 

excitement of looking out for the carriages of royal 
ladies. Without its court half the charm of modern 
Athens would be lost from the point of view of the mere 
observer. Who would not be sad to miss the blare of 
trumpets when the Queen in her motor leaves the 
Palace for her afternoon drive, the playing of the band 
for the trooping of the colours, the changing of the 
guard, and all the pretty pomp of which Athenians get 
full benefit since the Palace is in the heart of the 
town ? 

There are really two centres to the town. Constitution 
Square is the haunt of the foreigner. Here are the royal 
Palace, the smart hotels, the tourist agencies, the sellers 
of almond-blossom and violets, the islanders showing 
their webs of lace or baskets of sponges or eastern rugs 
held out over one arm. Concord Square at the lower 
end of the town is the centre for the natives. From it 
radiate all the main streets. Here are hotels, clean and 
roomy, with good Greek restaurants below ; here are the 
banks and business houses ; and instead of the victorias 
and landaus and big Austrian horses of the upper square 
there are here merry little open chaises covered with 
awnings and drawn by two small horses. 

My first vivid impression of Athens is connected with 
these white horses in the vis-a-vis cabs. After the 
bewildering loveliness of the journey along the Gulf of 
Corinth and the Saronic Gulf, we arrived in Athens 
one evening to find rain-wet streets shining with sunset, 
and the horses such strange shades of blue and pink, 
they seemed to have stepped from the Bayeux tapestry. 
Later experience showed that it is only the lining of the 
harness that dyes the horses to this hectic brilliance after 
a shower of rain. 

From the region around Concord Square a number of 
straight new streets run up the slopes at the base of 
Lycabettus. Here again my first impressions were at 



MODERN ATHENS 259 

fault. The beak-like rock of Lycabettus seemed to 
dominate the whole town. The Acropolis and even 
Hymettus seemed far away and insignificant by com- 
parison. It was quite a shock to learn that instead of 
needing guides and a rope Lycabettus is a mere garden- 
hill and can be climbed before breakfast. 

When Athens is not the muddiest town in Europe it 
can be the dustiest. The streets are metalled with friable 
limestone which seems unable to bind. Dry weather 
disintegrates it and wet weather washes it away. A day 
of torrential winter rain turns the streets into stony 
river-beds down which there gallop streams of yellow 
mud. The sun comes out again and in time the streets 
are dried, but it is months before a carriage can pass 
along them. It took nothing less than the prospect of a 
royal visit to induce the steam-roller to visit one hill-side, 
and then it only appeared at the eleventh hour. In fact 
the steam-roller may be said to have rolled up a few 
yards in front of the royal carriage. Remonstrances at 
this treatment were met with the reply, " But if we had 
mended the roads a week ago, the rain might have 
destroyed them again before the King came " — a remark 
that illustrates the difficulty of road-making in our 
town. 

However, in this, as in so many other ways, Athens is 
making rapid strides, and now all the principal streets 
are laid with asphalt. 

Athens is the capital of Greece, but it is also the 
market town for Attica. This fact is pleasantly empha- 
sized by the groups of peasants who each morning 
converge upon the city from the surrounding country. 
Conspicuous in their heavy garments covered with 
handsome wool embroidery, Albanians may be seen 
along any of the main roads leading to Athens. Some 
are in gaily painted carts, slightly resembling those 
used by peasants in Sicily. They are bringing the 



260 DAYS IN ATTICA 

produce of their small farms to town and at the same 
time will give a lift to their women friends who have 
business in -^olus Street, the great shopping quarter 
for the peasants. Those with lighter wares come, not 
in carts, but with donkeys carrying fruit, honey in large 
tins, brushwood for the bakers' ovens, or evergreens for 
churches and booths — picturesque loads all of them. 
The shepherds come on foot, with or without their 
flocks. Their business is usually to pay their tithes or 
rent. The monastery of the Holy Angels owns much 
grazing-ground near Vari, and one or two shepherds 
are generally seen outside its doors on the outskirts of 
the town. They are distinguished not only by the 
shepherd's crook (which they invariably carry) but also 
by the rough outer coat covered with hanging fringes. 
At first sight it looks as if it were the sheep's own coat 
that is being worn. On looking closely, however, you 
see that it is no true sheepskin but a woven garment 
with the ends of the wool left loose. Another favourite 
coat common to shepherds and peasants alike is made 
of heavy brown cloth with long black hairs. It is as 
solid but more harsh than our felt, and it is worn 
more as a protection against rain or sun than for warmth. 
Indeed it is too stiff and open to keep out the cold, but in 
summer, when the sleeves are thrown back from the 
shoulders, it shelters the spine from the sun. 

These peasants whom one sees daily in the streets of 
Athens are by no means the " country cousins " of 
European cities. They have more the air of local gentry 
paying an occasional visit to their county town. They 
know their way about and have their own haunts where 
they are welcomed. There are many little wine-shops at 
the corners of the streets, where the group of patient don- 
keys are often seen clustering in a scrap of shadow, while 
their masters are chatting or singing within. After the 
long ride into Athens the peasant dismounts here and 



MODERN ATHENS 261 

goes inside to skim the first cream of town gossip while 
he washes the dust from his throat. The animals are not 
tied, and sometimes a donkey, tired of waiting, indulges in 
the pleasure of a roll with or without the pack on his 
back. Then out rushes the brown-coated, white-legged 
master, and with much adjuration of the Panagia, '^ Holy 
Virgin," the beast is dragged from the dust and its load 
readjusted. There is also the pantopoleioriy a great friend 
to the peasant. Here groceries are sold, together with 
much useful household hardware, while small refresh- 
ments, wine, coffee, or loukoumi may be found at any 
hour. Each village patronizes its own particular panto- 
poleioUy generally on the outskirts of the town. Having 
left their donkeys in the care of the bakalis, or innkeeper, 
the young Albanians swagger about the town with a 
swinging stride. I had often wondered what became of 
the women-folk, who do not as a rule wander about the 
town with their men-kind. The question was answered 
the other day when I tracked a party of some thirty to a 
favourite little church in one of the small streets leading 
to the Metropolis Square. It was winter, but the sun fell 
on the side of the street opposite the church, and here 
they squatted on the curb talking and laughing until eleven 
o'clock. At eleven the soup kitchen in the neighbour- 
hood opened and they flocked to it in a body. They 
completely filled one of the long tables and made merry 
over beans and soup. This finished, they returned to 
their sunny station outside Hagia Barbara and probably 
spent the rest of the day there. They attended service in 
the church and perhaps wandered off by twos and threes 
to make their purchases in the streets near by, leaving 
babies in charge of the neighbours who remained on the 
curb. Thus when evening falls and the jingling little 
red carts come to pick them up and take them home again 
they are not jaded as our English country-folk would be 
with a day of sight-seeing and shopping. Sights they 



262 DAYS IN ATTICA 

have seen, but only such as happened to pass their way, 
not sought or paid for ; and the shopping has been done 
with the expedition of those who have decided for 
months past on the exact nature and price of each 
purchase. 

There is a great deal of fun as the youngest and oldest 
members of the party are pulled up into their place, and 
then each cart sets off straight for home, the bells on the 
horses' necks ringing as they go. In front sits the driver 
with his wife holding the baby. Between them are 
squeezed men friends. Behind these are three girls with 
white handkerchiefs on their heads and two older men with 
caps. These are all perched round the edges of the cart, 
for the centre is occupied by the large new washing-tub, 
which is the crowning glory of the day's excursion. The 
cart jolts on the stones and the girls laugh nervously as 
they cling with both hands to the sides. Then the twilight 
swallows them, and the town-dweller who has watched 
them turns home with the feeling that a country breeze 
has swept through the streets. 

There is another way in which the country element 
is kept alive in Athens. I have often been amazed at 
the number of bootblacks thronging all the public 
squares. It is true that the modern Athenians seem to 
rejoice in having their boots polished at all odd minutes, 
but even so I wondered what could be the special attrac- 
tion that drew so large a proportion of youngsters to this 
not very remunerative trade. After a time I learned 
that this is the outward sign of a great educational 
movement. From all parts of Greece boys with any 
special aptitude for learning are drafted to Athens from 
the provinces and are given a free education in large 
night-schools started for the purpose. In the day-time 
they earn their living and learn the practical wisdom 
of their trade, which is generally that of bootblack and 
errand-boy. In the evening they go to school, and an 



MODERN ATHENS 263 

ambitious boy pushes himself forward with no barrier 
between himself and the goal of his ambition, the Church, 
the Bar, or Parliament. Even in their school-life they 
are a privileged class. It is always supposed that it is their 
political weight which prevents any attempt on the part 
of the municipality to provide crossings on the proverbially 
muddy streets. Any private enterprise in this direction 
would at once be rudely crushed by the united bootblacks. 
In Ameiican terms this may be described as a " great 
democraiic educational shoe-shine company." The boys 
are all Inown as loustriy literally "shiners," though not 
every loistro follows the trade of a bootblack. 

The Icustro is an institution all over the city. He is the 
universcl errand-boy, the trustworthy messenger, and the 
general domestic assistant in cases of emergency. He is 
ready t) dig your garden, to transport your furniture, to 
wash TOur carriage, and to run for a doctor. More than 
on:e 1 have seen a well-dressed women call a loustro to 
caTy her baby, and in each case the burden seemed 
saisfied with its nurse. The loustro is distinguished by a 
loig blouse of tucked country cotton and by a rather 
inpish smile. 

The pedlars are another numerous body in Athens. 
Turkish tradition assumes that women do not leave their 
nouses to make purchases and that the wares must be 
brought to their doors. The Turk has disappeared, but 
the tradition of seclusion lingers and the pedlar remains. 
Tired little donkeys climb up and down the steep out- 
lying streets of Athens, carrying upright cupboards with 
glass fronts like miniature shops, and in these cupboards 
is shown a depressing assortment of tapes, buttons, and 
artificial jewellery. Pedlars without donkeys are also 
known. One of these may be seen carrying a dozen 
dress lengths from door to door. Eleven are laid over 
the right shoulder, the twelfth is draped in sweeping 
folds over the extended left arm and his voice calls as he 



264 DAYS IN ATTICA 

goes, *^ Foremata, oraia foremata, peninda lepta opichys" 
(" Dresses, beautiful dresses, fifty lepta the pik "). Counter- 
panes and rugs are hawked about the town in the same 
fashion, and the small householder finds the temptation 
irresistible. Amateur pedlars also abound. The man in 
search of a job goes to a shop in ^olus Street and is 
given two of the most unsaleable articles it can produce, 
probably a black japanned table and a flower-stand. 
These he carries round the suburbs crying his wares as 
he goes. It always seemed to me unlikely Ihat any 
housewife would suddenly awake to the fact that i flower- 
stand was the very thing she needed, nor did it sesm pos- 
sible that the objects would attract her by their -ntrinsic 
merit, yet I suppose that some one did once buy a black 
japanned table from a man at the door, or how else 
account for the pedlar's persistence ? 

Most conspicuous of all are the men selling bread or 
sweetmeats. In every holiday resort you see the kouloim- 
seller with his rings of sesame-covered bread dear to tie 
children's hearts. At the street corners you see the sane 
type of white-coated street-hawker selling different kin^s 
of Turkish sweetmeat. These and the bread are carried 
in a basket slung in front of the seller. Besides thes* 
there are numbers of little stalls planted along the wayside 
under the shade of the pepper-trees or planes. Athenians, 
big and little, often buy their breakfast at these stalls and 
munch it as they go to work or to school. Breakfast is of 
course a misleading term in these lands ; the koulouri or 
the slice of bread rebaked into a solid biscuit (paximadhi) 
eaten on the way to work is not dignified by the name of 
a meal. The southern races of Europe are content with 
two meals a day, while the Northerner takes three or 
four, but I doubt if the Southerner is really more 
abstemious. These bread vendors are always doing busi- 
ness, for from early childhood the Athenian is taught to 
nibble food at all jhours. The Englishman's cult of a 



MODERN ATHENS 265 

good appetite is unknown. No doubt each method is 
suited to its own climate. 

The most picturesque of all these town pedlars is the 
fruit-seller. It is not possible to be a day in Athens with- 
out noticing him and his donkey. The golden oranges 
and apples are piled high on the donkey's panniers. It 
looks a cruel load for the little animal, but he carries it 
cheerfully ; there is a good deal of false bottom to the 
pannier. The load would suffer no less than the bearer if 
these deep baskets were really filled to the bottom 
with fruit. 

In Constitution Square, hanging round the steps of the 
hotels, there are two other characteristic types, the sponge- 
sellers and the lace-men from Cyprus. These are not 
part of the normal life of Athens ; when the tourist season 
is over they vanish and we miss their insinuating smiles. 
The shallow waters of the Mediterranean have long lent 
themselves to the sponge industry, and two of its centres 
are at ^gina and Hydra. On either of these islands 
you may see the brown harvest spread out to dry upon 
the beach. Here are all varieties of size and colour, 
known to the trade under the mysterious names of 
"Fine Turkeys," "Brown Turkeys," "White Turkeys," 
" Elephant's Ear," "Cups," "Solids," and "Flats." The 
best fishing-ground is off the coast of Tunis. 

It is worth while to take one of the Athenian sponge- 
sellers into a retired corner and get him to empty his 
basket for you apart from the crowd of rival sellers and 
curious passers-by. You will find specimens of every 
variety in his deep store, and you will notice with surprise 
that the best sponges, the brown ones, are at the bottom. 
On the surface are placed the poorer ones, artificially 
whitened to attract the traveller, who, as usual, is sup- 
posed to be ignorant of the real values of native articles. 
The smell of the sea is in that magic basket, and if you 
question your sunburnt merchant you may find that he 



266 DAYS IN ATTICA 

himself knows much of the fascinating and dangerous 
trade. He will tell you how on calm summer days the 
boats float over the surface of the sea ; the sponge-fishers 
look through its depths with a water telescope until they 
discover the sponges growing on the rock below. In the 
stern of the boat sits the diver holding a great flat stone 
to which a rope is tied. He is quite naked but for a 
net-bag round his neck, and no one speaks to him as 
he waits, taking deep breaths. When his lungs are 
thoroughly inflated he seizes the stone, holds it to his 
chest, and suddenly without a word plunges into the sea. 
At the end of a minute or more a tug comes at the 
cord, and his companions throw themselves on the rope, 
pulling it up with a fine and rhythmical movement, the 
one stooping for the cord as the other flings himself 
back. The air is full of flying coils. A gleam of white 
flashes far down, and in a moment the diver shoots out 
of the water. In the bag round his neck is a slimy 
brown ball worth half a sovereign in Bond Street. This 
is the most primitive form of sponge-fishing. Diving 
dresses are also largely used in the Mediterranean ; owing 
to the careless fatalism, characteristic of the Greek, these 
are often allowed to get out of order and the proportion 
of deaths is accordingly appalling. In shallower water 
the sponges can be secured by a knife tied at the end 
of a series of jointed poles. 

The wares of the Cypriote lace-seller do not carry this 
atmosphere of romance with them, but he is a most 
attractive figure. He wears the island costume with its 
baggy knee-breeches, short cloth jacket, and an enormous 
sash wound around his waist. He fastens his cobwebs 
of lace round the steps of your hotel and confronts you 
with such a winning smile that before you realize what 
you are doing he has ensnared you in his toils. 

The peasants, the loustri, the pedlars — these are the 
everyday figures of the busy town life, and these supply 



MODERN ATHENS 267 

the note of colour that we miss elsewhere. Only at certain 
times of the year the whole town becomes suddenly 
picturesque with the enthusiasm of a national holiday. 
At New Year especially the place is transformed. The 
fruit shops are changed into booths of evergreens, fes- 
tooned with golden strings of apples and oranges. The 
butchers adorn their wares with a grim pleasantry which 
it is hard to enjoy. The slaughtered boar has a paper 
cap and the calf a gold star on its forehead. Streamers of 
green and blue tissue paper float from every stall, flags 
are flying, and coloured waxen tapers are everywhere for 
sale. On New Year's Eve (13th January in modern 
style) the streets of the town are thronged with merry- 
makers and soon become paved with paper confetti. 
Hermes Street and ^olus Street are lined with men 
selling cheap toys. These are nominally for the children, 
but their elders buy them freely, and the light-hearted of 
all ages parade the streets blowing the penny trumpet or 
inflating the paper cock. The hilarity goes on till mid- 
night, and does not die away until the cannons under 
Hymettus welcome the sunrise of the New Year with a 
salute of twenty-one guns. 

After the New Year festivities there is a brief lull before 
the town breaks out again into the frivolities of Carnival. 
It may be that the two merry-makings come too near 
together. There often seems to be something spurious 
and forced in the Carnival masquerades as compared 
with the joys of New Year time. People complain that 
the procession through the town which takes place on 
the last Sunday before Lent is no longer what it used to 
be, and in some years it has by common consent been 
abandoned. Still there are always a number of private 
parties at which there are fancy dresses and masks, while 
the bourgeoisie amuse themselves by parading the muddy 
streets as harkquins and pierrots. 

It is the children year by year who spur on the flagging 
enthusiasm by their own gravity and joyousness. 



268 DAYS IN ATTICA 

The fashion of " dressing-up " the children at the 
Carnival time seems universal among all classes. Beautiful 
satin-clad cavaliers and ladies trot demurely beside their 
nurses on the way to their afternoon party. I doubt if 
there is any family so poor that it does not manage to find 
some old counterpane or curtain or pillow-case that can 
be turned to account as a fancy dress for Janni or Marigo. 
For at least ten days before Lent these comic little figures 
are seen bustling along in groups of two or three with 
much smothered laughter behind the paper masks. 

Another joy of Carnival that is common to the whole 
child-life of Athens is the Carnival camel. Now this is a 
puzzling and mysterious institution at whose origin it is 
impossible to guess. In the first piace there is a real 
camel which sometimes appears in the streets at the 
Carnival. It is seldom seen, and if you happen to come 
across it your luck for the year is secured. In the second 
place there is the pseudo-camel, a terrifically ugly beast, 
created on the principle of the circus donkey. It waggles 
its head by a string worked from the interior and drops 
its lower jaw. Its back is covered by a cloth on which is 
painted a desert scene with palm-tree and pyramid all 
complete. Thus the problem of costume and scenery are 
solved simultaneously. In front of this creature walks a 
small drum and fife band, and behind it flocks the 
inevitable group of excited children. The last time I saw 
the camel it had halted beside a wine-shop. Its head 
drooped languidly on the ground. The desert scene was 
lifted and from under the side of the camel two hot, 
dusty men crept out to the unutterable joy of its 
admirers. 

At Carnival time other amusements are found in the 
streets. Actors are drawn about in carts. The horses 
are taken out ; the cart becomes the stage, and plays of 
a Punch and Judy brutality are enacted. 

Really good acting is seen in the summer-time, when 



MODERN ATHENS 269 

the roofless theatres are opened. There is a school of 
vigorous native art. The scenery of these open-air plays 
has often an Elizabethan simplicity, the audience is good- 
tempered and cheerful, the acting has the freshness and 
vigour of private theatricals. The plays are full of 
topical quips, and the most successful are frank repro- 
ductions of modern Athenian life. The open-air theatre 
is primarily for "the people." There is, however, a high- 
class edition to be found at Phalerum. On hot summer 
evenings the residents who still remain in Athens flock 
down here, take their dinner by the sea, and afterwards 
go to the theatre. It is not perhaps very high art, but it 
is fresh and amusing. The modern Athenian seems to 
retain a true dramatic instinct, and the acting is of a 
much higher order than would be found at similar places 
in England. 

After the Carnival the town settles down to a period of 
quiet and to a genuine fast of forty days. In saying that 
the fast is genuine, I do not of course mean that it is 
universal. Among the wealthy and educated its rigorous 
observance becomes yearly rarer. Even among the 
lower classes there are many who have broken away from 
the tradition of their fathers. On the whole, however, 
the abstinence first from meat and later from fish, eggs, 
and even oil, is honestly observed among the lower 
orders. It is a matter of real self-denial. On Good 
Friday the churches are open all the day long. A bier is 
shown wreathed with flowers and underneath this the 
children are taught to creep. In the evening the bier is 
carried through the town and men and women walk 
behind, each with a lighted taper. The tapers appear 
again the next night at the great ceremony of Easter 
Eve, which takes place in the square outside the Metro- 
politan Church. Each man carries an unlighted wax 
candle to the square, and when the sacred fire is brought 
out from the church the light is passed from candle to 



270 DAYS IN ATTICA 

candle. Good luck will come to those who can carry the 
flame to their homes without having it blown out by 
a gust of night air. 

Easter Day, like New Year's Day, is ushered in with a 
salute of twenty-one guns. It is the greatest festival 
in the Church's year. Throughout the day the noise 
is continuous. Regiments with their bands march 
through the streets to join the procession, when the 
Royal Family and all public officials go in state to the 
Te Deum service in the Cathedral. After the service the 
King visits the various barracks to taste the Easter lamb. 
His appearance in each quarter is greeted with a fresh 
burst of melody. As the day wears on instrumental 
gives way to vocal music and until midnight choruses of 
four or five men wander about the streets singing the 
monotonous minor harmonies of the Eastern Church. 
To call them minor harmonies is to understate the case, 
for there is an interval representing something like half 
a semitone which is peculiar to Eastern music and has 
an effect more minor than anything known to western 
harmony. Beside the singing and the brass bands the 
day used to be punctuated by small explosions. The 
Athenian invented a harmless cracker which made a 
tremendous noise and did more than anything else to 
refresh his soul in thanksgiving. Now this has been 
forbidden by law. When we asked why this was the 
chosen form of celebrating Easter Day we were told that 
men were " shooting Judas." Judas Iscariot is as it were 
the "Guy Fawkes" of Greek lands, and effigies of him are 
sometimes carried about in real Guy Fawkes fashion. 
Perhaps these noisy rejoicings jar on an Englishman's 
conception of Easter Day, but when the prejudice has 
been overcome he realizes the genuine feeling of joy 
that underlies it all. Still men greet each other with the 
old Easter greeting, "Christos Anesti " (" Christ is risen"), 
and still there comes the devout reply, " Vevaios Anesti " 



MODERN ATHENS 271 

(" He is risen indeed "). Two other festivals are Lady 
Day, 25th March (old style), which is celebrated as the 
anniversary of the declaration of independence, and 
St. George's Day (23 rd April), which until last year's 
tragedy was kept in honour of the late King George. 

Each town has its great days and its special types. 
They are not the important elements in its life, yet it 
is these that colour the mental impression and add 
a pleasant sharpness to our memory. Behind these 
moves the great machine, with its growing industries, its 
philanthropic societies, its social activities, the world of 
politics, and the life of the court. The bird of passage 
takes these things for granted and keeps his vision of 
the town a purely subjective impression. 

Alas ! poor bird of passage, how much he gains and 
how much he loses ! He gains a remoteness of spirit 
which the dwellers in Athens cannot always attain. The 
stranger can, if he wishes, ignore the social life around 
and feed on the memories of his classics until the 
shadows of his fancy become more real than the noisy 
phantoms of the modern town. His memory is not 
blurred by repeated impressions. His one first vision 
stays. Passers-by who have only a day or two in Athens 
are wont to be apologetic for their haste. They do not 
understand that they retain treasures of emotional sight- 
seeing which the city-dwellers can but envy. Yet on the 
other hand, the traveller with three days in Athens, who 
comes begging for crumbs of beauty from Athena's table, 
must be content with all she gives him, even though it 
be no more than two grey mornings on the Acropolis 
with a March wind blowing dust into his eyes and a crowd 
of guttural Teutons exploring the holy places. Let him be 
reticent in his disillusion, for is there not, after all, some 
discourtesy in approaching beautiful places at unsuitable 
times ? The real spirit of worship should wait for the 
goddess to reveal herself at the moment when her beauty 



272 DAYS IN ATTICA 

is more apparent, her abasement most hidden. This is 
the instinct that lies behind the custom of visiting the 
Parthenon by moonhght. It is worth any effort to know 
the Acropolis at its happy hours, at sunrise and sunset, 
by moonlight and starlight. To see sunrise from the 
Acropolis is to watch the chill purity of dawn shivered 
into fragments by the hundred golden lances which the 
sun sends before him over the grey shield of Hymettus. 
The columns of the Parthenon stand pallid, unmoved, 
and silent. Then in an instant the change comes. In 
the fraction of a second the marble is transformed from 
death to life. The golden glow flashes like a quick 
smile. The magical instant is over and the daylight 
world reasserts itself. Are not the swift revelations 
worth hours of noonday communings ? 

Moonlight has no special Athenian attributes. The 
wonder is concentrated on the silver glory and the great 
temples lose some of their individuality ; these inky 
shadows and sharp silhouettes might belong to many 
another ruin in the moonlight. The silent, starlight hour 
before the moonrise reveals more of the spirit of the 
Parthenon. The stars move so peacefully below the 
black edge of the Acropolis. The whole world seems 
circling round the solid columns anchored up here in 
space. And in these dusky hours we get a chance of 
another sensation when Athena's own owl flaps slowly 
out from under the temple's shadow. 

But the time of all others for the revelation of what 
beauty means is the time of sunset in summer. At the 
end of an exhausting day the Acropolis is almost 
deserted. The tourists have left the city and the 
Athenians who remain prefer more social haunts. Yet 
the air that greets one at the end of the climb is a special 
benediction of coolness. The town lies below parched 
and panting. Up here the breeze from the sea is blowing 
freshly, and if it is a lucky evening, as the sun nears the 



MODERN ATHENS 273 

heights of Cithaeron, the air begins to tingle and vibrate 
with colour. These lucky evenings do not come perhaps 
more than once in seven. Yet they are worth waiting 
for. In the town one already begins to feel the stir of 
the sunmotes in the air. " It is a colour evening/' they 
say, and if you are wise you will hasten to the high place 
to worship. Here you find the temples bathing in a sea 
of gold. The carving on the north porch of the Erech- 
theum is sharply articulate in the sunlight poured over 
it. The various faces of the columns catch the light at 
just so many different angles. Here it becomes trans- 
lucent, here full gold, and here in the shadow all tender 
and unbelievable shades of violet. Beautiful, beautiful 
marble, hewn and chiselled and defaced, now for one 
magic hour glorified and restored again to its rightful 
heritage — man's joy ! 

The sun has nearly gone now. We walk to the east 
end of the Acropolis and lean out over the noisy scene 
of life below. There come up to us the confused cries 
of a great city and we see modern Athens spreading 
beneath us, with its white houses and the patches of 
heavy green marking the gardens. Then our eyes seek 
the hills and follow the curves of the horizon, until 
they seem like the lift and fall of some familiar 
melody. And we know that the melody in our hearts 
is the same that has rung through the lives of all the 
lovers of the Fair City, who came up here to gaze 
on her violet crown and aspire after her visions of 
ordered beauty and to sigh for love of all she might 
have been. " Beautiful city of Cecrops ! May we not 
also say. Beautiful City of God ? " 



CHAPTER XII 
HOME LIFE IN ATTICA 

IT is not easy to know the Greek, the true Greek, in 
his own home. In Athens, as in every other capital, 
certain families of wealth or influence form a society 
so cosmopolitan that they are no longer typical of the 
national life. Inside their homes you see furniture from 
London, hangings from Paris, dresses from Vienna. Set 
down inside one of these little marble palaces you would 
find it difficult to guess to what nationality your hosts 
belonged. Two or three languages would be spoken 
around you, and even the children growing up under 
the care of English or Swiss nurses would chatter in 
English or French. At a dinner or dance you would be 
sure you were not in England, but you might be in any 
southern capital. I have grateful memories of many 
pretty evening parties at such houses, where the ladies 
wore exquisite gowns and never seemed to ruffle their 
hair ; where partners were suave and serious, and 
etiquette forbade them to stay with their ladies for more 
than a fraction of a dance ; of dinners where there was 
no desolating parting at the end of dessert, no jerky 
reunion in the drawing-room afterwards. 

In Athens there is no titled Greek aristocracy, for the 
old titles were not revived at the establishment of the 
new kingdom and the Crown was given no power to 
create new ones. A distinct upper circle there is never- 
theless ; a society of wealth, birth, and power. Families 

274 



HOME LIFE IN ATTICA 275 

holding names known in history, descendants of soldiers 
or statesmen who came to the front during the War of 
Independence, and a few Venetian counts from the 
Ionian Islands, certain Phanariot families who received 
titles from their Turkish masters in the past — these 
are the birthright members who form the Greek contin- 
gent of that cosmopolitan company which stands for 
aristocracy in Athens. Then there are also Anglo- 
phil houses where everything is quite English — more 
English than England sometimes — from the lawn- 
tennis court in the garden to the jolly sit-down tea 
of bread and honey round the dining-room table. 

These home circles are all accessible. It is the home 
of the genuine middle-class Greek that is hard to pene- 
trate. He lives in one of the many gay little streets on 
the slopes of Lycabettus, or around Concord Square, 
or on the Patissia Road. You may call at such houses 
year in and year out and never meet with other than 
the invariable " Dhen dheketai " (*^ Madame does not 
receive "). One guesses that life in these homes is not 
planned with a view to the reception of casual visitors. 
The drawing-room is probably shrouded in holland, 
the blinds down, and the carpet rolled into a long 
sausage at one end of the room. Madame is sitting 
in the living-room in a nice cool wrapper trimming 
her hat, with pins in her mouth. Monsieur perhaps 
is having his midday siesta on the sofa. A caller here 
would be an inconvenient interruption. Unless you 
are on terms of intimate, neighbourly understanding 
involving a perfect frankness about curling-pins and 
dressing-gowns, you will not penetrate the sanctity of 
these homes. Twice or thrice in the year at most the 
house is open to visitors. On New Year's Day and on 
the days dedicated to their own patron saints Monsieur 
and Madame will open the shutters in the large 
drawing-room. The hollands will be taken off the 



276 DAYS IN ATTICA 

chairs, and sweet cakes with rich creamy coverings 
will be placed on the central table. Throughout the 
whole day friends and acquaintances will be welcomed. 
There will be much offering of flowers, congratulations, 
pretty speeches, jokes, and general jollification. These 
grown-up birthday parties are the merriest occasions. 
No one is ever '* too old for birthdays " in Athens. A 
sober middle-aged gentleman will go on year after year 
celebrating not exactly the day of his birth, but the 
festival of the saint whose name he bears. His friends 
will perhaps publish their greetings in the newspaper 
and he may himself remind the public of the coming 
anniversary. On one or two occasions, ignorant of 
our host's Christian name or forgetful of the calendar 
of the Greek Church, we have sometimes surprised theee 
birthday parties and have been pressed to join the group 
round the table. Middle-aged men are slapping each 
other on the back, laughing with tears in their eyes, 
and then turning to the stranger with quick courtesy 
to interpret the old allusion or the idiomatic joke. 
There is nothing more charming than the way in which 
these mere acquaintances are ready to make us sharers 
of that humorous or humiliating adventure that befell 
them long years ago and is now the stock joke on 
these family anniversaries. After realizing the import- 
ance of the name-day one understands why it is a 
point of honour to remember a Greek's Christian name 
and to address him in full on an envelope rather than 
make use of the convenient non-committal initial. 

Though the home of the Athenian citizen is not open 
to view in its normal workaday aspect, one may see 
a good deal of home life in the family groups that 
cluster round the cafes, that come out in the evening 
to listen to the band, or that rattle down to Phalerum 
in the noisy steam-tram. Delightful parties are seen 
sitting round the little iron tables of the open-air cafes 



HOME LIFE IN ATTICA 277 

in town and suburb. The mother has an unexpressive 
olive face ; she sits placidly eating her ice and seems 
to be enjoying her tight-fitting green dress and well- 
feathered hat. The father also is enjoying the dark- 
eyed baby on his knee ; and the sleek-headed children 
are enjoying the sweets, the band, and the sense of the 
little festa. Bank holidays in England rarely show this 
type of quiet family festivity. Our well-ordered families 
of this class would not allow themselves to feast in 
public. One must look higher or lower in the social 
scale for that. 

In spite of the customary mariage de convenance the 
life of the average Greek household seems peaceful and 
contented. There may not be much intellectual com- 
panionship between husband and wife, but custom has 
assigned to each their sphere of influence with a pre- 
cision that reduces discussion to a minimum. In 
houses that are blessed with children there is every 
appearance of affection and self-congratulation. 

Children are universally petted in Greece. They are 
treated as companions even in babyhood. They have 
their part in the full family life and usually dine at 
their parents' table. They hear much grown-up con- 
versation and soon learn to take a sophisticated view 
of life. They are not necessarily spoilt, yet they are 
not left alone in their happy kingdom of childhood. 
In larger households where a nursery is provided for 
them it becomes the most popular and often the most 
frequented room in the house. English nurses are 
sometimes driven to despair by fruitless efforts to secure 
the discipline and quiet routine of an English nursery. 
The spoilt child — if there is one — has opportunities 
for the most relentless tyranny. One little girl of my 
acquaintance was bribed to eat her food, and of her 
delicate appetite made a profitable source of income 
until at last she spoilt the market by running up the 



278 DAYS IN ATTICA 

bidding as high as 24 drachmas (nearly ;^i) before she 
would eat her egg. She got the drachmas, but her 
father would not enter the unequal contest again. 

In humble households a small income is often made to 
achieve wonderful results. There is a tradition of thrift 
and a careful planning of detail that is not unlike the 
French menage. An officer drawing pay at about 
500 drachmas a month (say ;£2o) may be found living 
in a pleasant house with green shutters, a fine flight of 
steps leading up to the front door, and over it a balcony 
large enough to accommodate the whole family when 
they rush out to see papa marching by in his uniform 
of bronze and rose. There is an electric bell beside the 
front entrance. When you press this the door flies 
open, and if you hesitate on the threshold a voice from 
the upper air encourages you to walk in. You climb the 
steep clean staircase with a balustrade of new oak on 
your right and a wall frescoed with " art nouveau " 
curves on your left. The parlour that you enter is also 
furnished in the new style. There is no appearance of 
poverty. The whole place is clean and bright. The 
good Athenian housewife knows that the sun is her 
best friend. When the balcony is not needed as an 
opera box it does service as the sunning-ground for 
carpets, curtains, and bedding. 

Further acquaintance with a family of this class 
would probably disclose a hard struggle with poverty 
— implying incessant watchfulness and anxiety. But a 
southern climate is kind to thin purses. The appetite 
of the Athenian is not large. The bill for fuel and 
washing is reduced to a minimum, thanks to the constant 
sunshine and clean atmosphere. There are pleasures to 
be had for nothing ; the walk in the orange-grove, the 
masqueraders in the square, the change of the King's 
guard, the flash of blue and silver livery as a royal 
carriage goes by, and beyond all else the wide views 



HOME LIFE IN ATTICA 279 

and the exhilarating atmosphere that sends us Athenians 
about our day's work with a singing heart. Compared 
with its equivalent in an English town, the home of 
struggling gentility in Athens is a paradise. 

It is easier to share the life of the peasant than the 
life of the townsman. The well-to-do peasant-pro- 
prietor is hospitality itself when you visit him in the 
country. Even in towns the peasant class seems more 
approachable than the black-coated gentry living beside 
them. Among the peasants the Turkish tradition still 
survives to a great extent. The women are secluded 
and are also in a sense subjugated, though this does 
not imply disrespect, much less ill-treatment. One 
characteristic family comes into my mind and I see 
the mother of our host, cooking and serving the dinner 
and then coming to stand behind his chair and dominate 
the conversation. No one who has heard this good 
lady contradicting her son, lecturing her guests, and 
laying down the law on questions of religion and 
philosophy will ever dogmatize about the subjection of 
women in the East. Yet this same woman would not 
dream of sitting at table with her son, and was quite 
content to spend her days in the kitchen while he 
entertained us in the living-room. This common custom 
is no doubt a relic of Turkish manners. The old tradi- 
tions are slowly changing, and one dare not generalize. 
To give the two sides of the picture it is only fair to 
describe another scene photographed on my memory. 

It was the Monday before Lent, known as " Clean 
Monday," a day of purification and a universal holiday. 
A jolly old Attic countryman was walking down Univer- 
sity Street with his wife. She was a mild-eyed matron 
with one of those beautiful passive faces that come 
sometimes to women who dwell in country places and 
are ruled by strong husbands. He was a fine broad 
fellow, well over fifty, and so upright that he almost 



280 DAYS IN ATTICA 

seemed to be leaning backwards. The open sleeves 
of his blue serge coat floated back from his wide 
shoulders, his clean kilt swung to and fro as he stepped, 
and the big leather purse worn round his waist sug- 
gested the opulence of convex lines curving over his 
convex figure. The wife walked a pace or two behind 
him, looking wistfully at the closed shops and showing 
disappointment that her big husband had brought her 
into the town on a festa. Her whole attitude indicated 
that she had spent her life dominated by this powerful 
personality. I doubt if she had even thought it worth 
while to expostulate that morning when he expressed 
his intention of coming into the town on a day when 
all the townsfolk were making holiday in the country. 
One important matter that tends to keep a woman 
in a subordinate position is the necessity of providing 
her with a dowry. To put the matter bluntly, a Turk 
buys his wife, but a Christian woman must buy her 
husband. However useful a girl may be at home, no 
filial duties redeem her from the necessity of marriage. 
Until she is married her parents cannot die and her 
brother cannot live, for it is reckoned disgraceful for 
a man to marry before his sisters. This tradition dates 
no doubt from the Turkish denomination when an 
unprotected maiden might soon find herself in a Turk's 
harem. The difficulty of finding a husband resolves 
itself into the difficulty of finding a dowry. Once the 
money is provided there are matchmakers whose busi- 
ness it is to provide the girl with a suitable parti. The 
poorest parents must therefore provide for their 
daughters a sum of money — the amount varying in the 
different districts — a set of house linen, a small trousseau 
for herself, one or more suits of clothes for the bride- 
groom, and an umbrella, I shall never forget the 
emphasis laid on the last three words by one anxious 
parent. She seemed to feel that everything else might 



HOME TilFE IN ATTICA 281 

be possible, but the umbrella presented insuperable 
difficulties. Spinning and weaving, sewing and embroi- 
dery could all be managed at home. An umbrella must 
be paid for in hard cash. 

In order to gather this outfit a girl begins making her 
house linen as soon as she can spin. The cotton is 
woven in the house and then sheets and towels are 
marked large with her initials in neat red cross-stitch. 
Next she makes her own wardrobe, and a girl of well-to- 
do parents will allow herself to give time and trouble 
to the embroidery on her short coats and round the hem 
of her skirts. Perhaps like the English country-woman 
she will specialize on some form of crochet lace. It is 
quite allowable to ask a Greek girl to show you her 
dowry. She will keep the man's suit of clothes until 
the last, and then, after slight pressure, will show you 
knitt^dr stockings, embroidered waistcoats, and short 
overcoats, with perhaps a sash and cap to complete the 
costume. When asked how she had guessed the size 
-of her unknown future lord she will blush and look 
rather startled, while her mother says firmly that it is 
necessary that he should fit the clothes. This must 
be an additional complication in the work of the 
matchmaker. 

It has often been our privilege to spend a night or 
two in the house of some well-to-do Greek peasant. As 
soon as it is daylight the household bestirs itself. The 
man goes off to his work in the fields ; wife and daughters 
fetch water, mend the charcoal fires, and prepare coffee 
for the stranger. There is no gathering round the table 
for breakfast, no routine of house work. The peasant 
will presently break off hoeing or building to drink a 
cup of black coffee at the village cafe and the women- 
folk probably eat bread as they go to their work. I have 
never yet seen a Greek peasant woman sit down to what 
we should call ^* a comfortable meal " in her own house 



282 DAYS IN ATTICA 

Yet she is by no means a mere drudge. It is true that 
she has much to do for her household. There is water 
and wood to fetch, clothes to wash at the spring, food 
to prepare, yarn to spin, stockings to knit, floors to 
sweep, and children to nurse. She adds many duties 
to those of the ordinary English housewife, and the 
only ones she seems to omit are the dusting of furniture 
and the darning of stockings. Her house is thoroughly 
washed out at intervals with plenty of water and a good 
large brush ; the bare walls and plain wooden furniture 
go without a daily dusting. She has no time to darn 
stockings. Where necessary she can sew on a large 
patch. Greek women are great patchers and have 
learnt how decorative the ^^ patch complementary " may 
be when boldly applied. Yet in spite of her many 
duties she has plenty of time for social intercourse. 
Her washing is carried on at a public laundry — the village 
fountain. Her patching and spinning are done as she 
sits on her low doorstep. Here also she combs her 
children's hair and nurses her baby. She is constantly 
cracking jokes with her women neighbours ; she knows 
all the gossip of the village, and makes a point of attend- 
ing church on Sundays and saints' days with a fresh 
white or lemon-coloured kerchief round her head. On 
these days she will join for hours in the slow rhythmical 
dances of the village. Her hands are knotted, her brown 
face wrinkled with the sun-frown of southern lands. 
Round her mouth are creases of humour. She has the 
genuine " salty " wit of one who has made friends with her 
own hard life. It is the type of the sonsy Scotch woman 
planted under a more genial sky. Sometimes she shares 
her husband's labour in the fields. At harvest-time it 
is not uncommon to find a village entirely deserted. The 
women are working with their husbands, the children 
are playing beside them, and the baby is slung on a tree 
to sleep in the shade. As a general rule the man does 



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HOME LIFE IN ATTICA 283 

not come home for his midday meal. More often you 
will see him shortly before noon eating his bread and 
olives beside his plough or mule. Like an English 
aristocrat the Greek peasant ^' dines " at night. Now his 
wife must prepare for him the best they can afford. It 
may be " egg-lemon *' soup or a dish of raisins and sesame, 
or a fish fried in oil. There will be meat on a feast 
day : perhaps a ragged bit of lamb or neat little kabobs 
of mutton roasted on a twig of bay. The local wine, 
good or bad, will be his drink, and the feast is furnished 
with oranges or cherries ; artichokes or lettuce may come 
from his own plot, and perhaps there is an abundant 
dish of wild salad — mustard or dandelions which he has 
carried home in his pocket-handkerchief. He is a great 
bread-eater and heartily enjoys his plain loaf eaten with 
olives or radishes as a relish. 

When fresh the country bread is certainly excellent. 
Baking, however, is a cumbrous process, and there are 
long intervals of stale bread between the great baking 
days. On these days the village oven is made red-hot 
by a furnace of brushwood. After the fire has gone out 
and when the oven has slightly cooled the village house- 
wives bring their loaves on trays and pile them into the 
white dome-shaped building. The business becomes 
especially solemn at Easter-time, when each loaf is 
marked with a cross and ornamented with embedded 
crimson eggs which are baked with the loaf. None but 
those who have undergone the severe Lenten fast of the 
Greek Church can tell how good that fresh bread tastes 
on Easter Day — the crackling brown crust sprinkled 
with sesame seeds and the mouthfuls of hard-boiled egg 
lurking in its interior. 

The Greek priest is usually a peasant among peasants. 
He cultivates his bit of ground with his own hands and 
is glad to eke out its meagre produce by the fees that 
come to him for performing the few rites of the church : 



284 DAYS IN ATTICA 

funerals, weddings, baptisms, and purifications. Being 
a family man himself he knows how to handle a baby 
adroitly, and the ceremony of triple immersion is so 
swiftly accomplished that the infant has not even time 
to scream before it is handed back dripping to its mother. 
He knows how to make himself at home in any house 
and never neglects to visit every room with the sprig of 
basil and holy water at the purification before Lent. 
There are some notable exceptions, but as a rule he has 
no pretensions to any education beyond what is necessary 
to repeat the services of the church. He is a good-hearted 
companion rather than shepherd or leader of his flock. 

The village community is still a reality in Greece. 
Sometimes it exists as a self-sufficing whole. The 
members are small peasant-proprietors who live on the 
produce of their farm or sheepfold. The simple arts of 
life are carried on in the households : wool, silk, and 
cotton are spun and woven at home. A large loom is 
part of the common furniture of each house, and the 
ceiling is often lined with hanging bamboo shelves on 
which thousands of silkworms are housed and fed. 
Each household lives on what it can produce, and the 
village carpenter, blacksmith, and dyer are paid in kind 
rather than in money. One result of this is that there is 
very little money passing from hand to hand. We have 
sometimes found the Greek peasant ludicrously ignorant 
of the market price of his day's labour. He is generally 
ready to hire himself out when opportunity offers, as this 
gives him a chance of earning money to pay for the two 
imported articles which are the luxuries of his simple life 
— coffee and tobacco. 

When the American Greek returns home to squander 
his money before the eyes of his fellow-townsmen he 
advertises his affluence by sitting for long hours outside 
the village cafe drinking innumerable little cups of coffee 
and smoking long, thin cigarettes. 



HOME LIFE IN ATTICA 285 

HOME LIFE OF THE EUROPEAN IN GREECE 

In England housekeeping is a science or an art as you 
choose to regard it. In Greece it is a game and, like all 
other games, you must know the rules before you can 
enjoy it. 

The first rule is " Never take anything seriously." If 
your cook bids you an eternal farewell two hours before 
your dinner party ; if your new housemaid scrubs your 
parquet floors; if your tulip bulbs are cooked for onions, 
there is only one thing to be done, and that is laugh. 
At home we housewives are inclined to feel that our 
reputation is at stake if anything goes wrong. In Athens 
we all know that '^ such things will occur," and we all 
judge each other kindly and are willing to lend our 
cooks, or floor-polish, or our bulbs, as the case may be. 

The second rule is " Live from hand to mouth." The 
conditions of the climate make it unwise to keep any 
store of provisions in the house. Be content that your 
cook should bring you each day your daily supply of 
bread, butter, milk, meat, and vegetables. If a party 
of English friends "come up with a song from the sea" 
and unexpectedly claim your hospitality for luncheon, 
your servants will gladly make all the show they can 
with everything there may happen to be in the house, 
though they and you must fast for it this night. Perhaps 
your butler will dash out to " borrow " a leg of mutton 
from your neighbour or the roses from his garden. No 
Greek servant ever fails to rise to an emergency. He loves 
emergencies. It is the daily round that gravels him. 

The third rule is " Remember that a difference in 
standard is no crime." We of the higher morality are so 
apt to make a tragedy of it when we find that what 
we call " common honesty " is very uncommon ; when 
untruthfulness is regarded as a fagon de purler and clean- 
liness as a mere whim. It is hard to maintain our own 



286 DAYS IN ATTICA 

standard rigidly and yet to understand that the other 
folk have a different standard but are not without their 
own moral scruples. It is bad enough to be cheated or 
robbed, but does it not make matters better to realize 
that the cheat or the robber was perhaps doing no wrong 
in his own eyes ? 

Once learn these rules and the game goes merrily. 
Greek servants are delightful to deal with. They are so 
clever, so willing, so lighthearted, enthusiastic in their 
gratitude, abject in their despair, devoted to the honour 
of their master's house, shrewd, humorous, " quick in 
the uptake." Above all things they are very adaptable. 
You start your housekeeping with, say, a cook, a butler, 
a housemaid, a nurse, and a gardener, but these designa- 
tions are mere sketchy indications of their various 
spheres. One day perhaps the butler will be nursing the 
baby, while the gardener is showing the cook how to 
make a cake. The next day it is the butler who is cook- 
ing and the housemaid has chosen to do a little weeding 
in the garden. The Greek is no specialist. The old 
Athenian tradition survives and any citizen holds himself 
capable of filling any office. 

We once had an amusing experience of this on a 
Greek ^coasting steamer. We fouled our anchor on 
leaving a tiny port in the Peloponnese and our captain 
quite failed to get it clear again. The sun was setting 
and we seemed likely to stay at anchor all night. One 
by one the various members of the crew joined us on the 
bridge and helped the captain with advice and encourage- 
ment. It was finally the steward who took the matter 
in hand and so manoeuvred the boat's head that he got 
the anchor clear. There was a great shout of joy from 
all the crew, and then, like Cincinnatus, he returned 
to the saloon to lay our dinner while the captain resumed 
the navigation of his ship. 

It is hard to wring from any Greek servant an admis- 



HOME LIFE IN ATTICA 287 

sion of ignorance. If I order " Cleopatra pudding," the 
cook will set to work to make what he imagines '^ Cleo- 
patra pudding" ought to be rather than confess that he 
has never met with it. There are certain well-known 
types of Greek servants. I will sketch them in outline, 
first protesting that they are but composite pictures. I 
love my old friends too well to reveal their foibles in a 
portrait study. 

The Butler is the mainstay and prop of the household. 
He rules the other servants like a housekeeper; he betrays 
their weaknesses to you ; skilfully and delicately he im- 
parts the impression that your peace and happiness 
depend on him. He alone can serve you faithfully ; he 
alone knows where you keep your hats, your coats, your 
india-rubber, and your keys. He it is that guards you 
from intrusive callers when you are resting or induces 
the honoured guest to stay *' another little quarter" in 
the hope of your return. He signals to you with his 
eyebrows that there is no more cake for the last visitors, 
and deftly he reads your answering eyebrow signal that 
"there is a tin of shortbread in the cupboard and the 
keys are in the upper left-hand drawer." He adorns 
your table with flowers and arranges a bower of roses to 
welcome you after an absence from home. He waits 
until the last minute for your letters and then flies down 
the road at top-speed, never grumbling at the long chase, 
never failing to assure you that he was " just in time for 
the mail." He knows a remedy for every ailment that 
besets you and will try to right every accident in the 
house. On locks and electric bells he will try his skill, 
though he leave them worse than he found them. He 
is no mean cook, and in many households it will fall to 
his share to prepare the breakfast. In an emergency he 
may be called upon to cook a dinner and he can always 
criticize the proper official over every dish. As a rule 
no joints are carved in the dining-room, so the butler 



288 DAYS IN ATTICA 

must hand the portion ready cut, and he shows his 
special professional knowledge by murmuring in your 
ear, ''Not that piece — the next." 

It is clear, then, that the butler is not a man to be 
parted from lightly. The longer you keep him the more 
indispensable he grows. You will have to take care lest 
he become a tyrant. *' II ne faut pas se laisser rouler 
par les Grecs," says experience, and how the butler 
would love to "roll" you, to order your dinners, invite 
your guests, bully your tradesmen, choose your news- 
papers, your friends, your servants. He would save you 
all trouble, and finally do something so outrageously 
arrogant that you would be bound to dismiss him. 

The Cook is a free-lance. He lives in a home of his own 
and comes up in the morning with supplies for the day. 
After luncheon is served he will probably spend the 
afternoon at his club in the town, returning in the 
evening to cook your dinner. As he is constantly going 
from your home to the centre of the town he becomes 
something also of a messenger boy. He orders the cabs, 
takes daily letters to the post, and leaves notes. This 
latter service is the more necessary from the fact that 
it requires anything from a few hours to a week for a 
letter to find its way by post from one house in the city 
to another. When the cook does the marketing it is he 
who arranges the menu for the day. The housekeeper 
will have told him her plans, how many guests she 
expects and may even have indicated her views as to 
what food he shall procure. A docile cook will carry 
out her hints loyally, but a man of character may prefer 
to go his own way and will come up from town assuring 
his mistress that " there was not a hare to be found in the 
market, no boar, no deer, not a bit of game, but see what 
a noble turkey I have found for you ! — beautiful, fat " ; 
and he prods the turkey with his fingers, while she sets 
to work to reconstruct her ideas for dinner. 



HOME LIFE IN ATTICA 289 

The book in which he writes down the items of his 
marketing is a charming document with wild spelling and 
no accents. The prices charged in the book are not 
exactly what he gave, but are about what any foreigner 
would be expected to pay in the market. The cook's 
commission is an acknowledged perquisite and must not 
be called dishonesty unless it assumes quite unreasonable 
proportions. In defence of the Greek servant it must 
also be added that thieving is very uncommon. We 
have always found him trustworthy where money and 
valuables were concerned. 

In Greece as elsewhere the warm life of the cook leads 
to a warm temper. There is no '* month's notice " in 
Greece. The chef walks out of the house when he has 
had enough of it. His employers are not inconsolable. 
They send a message to the Cooks' Club. The quorum 
of cooks there assembled discuss the matter, decide 
among themselves who is the most suitable man for your 
post, and next morning he turns up cool, fresh, and 
obliging, to obliterate the stormy memories of his 
predecessor. This Cooks' Club is an invaluable institu- 
tion. Its members become an independent confraternity ; 
they can share the poignant joys and sorrows of their 
profession and give that intelligent sympathy which 
every true artist requires from his fellows. From the 
club the cook will borrow any recipe or apparatus needed 
for a special occasion, and sometimes he will even bring 
up a friend to help him to prepare for a dinner party. 
No charge is made and we understand that it is all part 
of the give and take of club life. 

A good Housemaid is something of a rarity. Domestic 
service is hardly yet understood among the lower orders. 
The survival of some old Turkish prejudice makes a man 
loth to let his sister or daughter leave her father's roof 
and shield until she is married. If dowries are to be 
earned the mother will probably prefer to go into service 



290 DAYS IN ATTICA 

herself and leave her daughters at home. This accounts 
for the fact that most housemaids are middle-aged or 
elderly women. The best are not easy to find, but if you 
secure one of the right type she may prove a treasure, 
combining the motherly wisdom of the old English nurse 
with the sprightly gaiety of the Southerner. She will 
laugh and cry over your personal joys and sorrows, will 
treat your absurd English ideas of method with the 
tolerance due to a child's fancies ; she may have a genius 
for sewing and fine laundry- work, and if she hails from 
one of the Greek islands you may count on a sturdy love 
of soap and water, and a capacity for honest labour. 
Andros and Tenos have a reputation for supplying the 
most excellent maidservants. A young island girl may be 
a very vision of beauty, but the older ones are more 
commonly met with. 

I have a clear picture of one dear old soul trotting 
about the house with wrinkled brown face and the 
curious hinged figure of the Greek peasant who bends 
from the hips rather than with the knees. She was 
the dearest, ugliest creature I ever knew and in spite 
of her sixty years as vain as a girl. Her delight in her 
English cap and apron was unfeigned. Her great grief 
was her lack of eyebrows. She confided this to me one 
day, saying : " I expected you would send us packing as 
soon as you arrived, mistress. Why, when we stood in 
the hall to receive you I never saw such an ugly crew — 
not an eyebrow among us." Her favourite epithet was 
the untranslatable Kaimene. " Poor soul " is perhaps 
the nearest Eng^-sh equivalent. She used it on every 
occasion, often accompanied by an encouraging pat on 
the shoulder. A request for a daily bath was met with 
the reply, " Ah yes, poor soul, it is better to be clean." 
This showed her understanding of the European point of 
view, for the Greek peasant as a rule does not bathe in 
order to be clean. A bath is an extreme remedy ordered 



HOME LIFE IN ATTICA 291 

by the physician on rare occasions as an English doctor 
might order a cold pack. Once when we ventured to 
suggest a bath for some slight ailment we were met by 
the indignant answer, "What! wash off my chrism oil?" 
It was always a paradox to me how the good Greek 
housemaid could combine this horror of personal 
ablution with a real enjoyment of washing and cleaning 
the house. Her favourite way of cleaning is to take off 
her shoes and stockings, empty a canful of water in the 
top passage, and paddle after it with a brush, swirling it 
along the corridors and down the stairs. This plan 
answers capitally in a house with stone passages and 
marble stairs. It is more doubtful where only wood is 
used, and yet even with this drawback it is exhilarating 
enough to enter your house in the middle of a hot 
morning and be met first by a sound of vigorous brushing 
and singing, and next by a cascade of soapy water 
rushing down the front stairs, while two bare feet and an 
edge of petticoat fill the top of the picture. 

Many households, aware of the difficulty of finding 
a well-trained woman servant, prefer a " houseman " to 
a '' housemaid." It must be confessed that he performs 
his duties with a delicate finish, superior to anything 
we know in England. He turns down a bed at night 
with a sprig of rosemary resting on the folded corner 
of the sheet ; night attire is skilfully arranged as though 
its owner were expecting to dive into it from above ; 
the morning cup of tea is served with a bouquet of 
flowers. 

The Gardener, — To see the gardeners of Athens one 
must visit the square outside the Church of St. Irene on 
Sunday morning between six and noon. Here the 
nurserymen bring their young fruit trees, euonymus, 
pepper, and plane-trees, and a variety of flowering shrubs 
and plants, and here the gardeners come to replenish 
their stocks. Here also come the peasants, stalwart 



292 DAYS IN ATTICA 

descendants of Aristophanes' Acharnians, their country 
carts filled with arbutus and young pines torn from the 
flanks of Parnes. 

The flowers are few and disappointing. Owing to 
the dread of phylloxera it is difficult for foreign varieties 
of plants to be introduced into the country, and there 
is a certain sameness in the pansies, violets, anemones, 
iris, and rosemary that fill all the gardens. Roses do 
capitally. One can fill a garden with roses and wish 
for nothing else all spring, yet even here I doubt 
whether an English gardener would not shake his head. 
There are few of the named varieties with their rare and 
perfect blooms ; instead one finds a variety of tea-rose, 
prolific in blossom, the effusive banksia, and the " seven 
sisters rose," with its knots of small pink buds that will 
riot over any untidy corner, making the wilderness 
rejoice. Give it a bit of marble column, or a flight of 
steps to festoon, and you have an Alma Tadema picture 
in a twelve-month. 

It is the young trees that are most tempting in the 
gardeners' market. One may buy twenty young orange- 
trees for something like thirty shillings, and their golden 
lamps will brighten the garden the winter through. 
Lemons and musmula are equally moderate in price, and 
their glossy leaves are most desirable, apart from their 
good fruit harvest. Kukunaria pines, pepper-trees, 
planes, eucalyptus, suggest fragrant groves in the future. 
Given a regular supply of water, the baby tree from 
the market grows into a healthy stripling at once, and 
in five years' time will be shading a tea-table. The long 
patience of the English forester is not needed here. 
The trees in the market are only specimens from the 
gardens outside the town at Ambelokepi, Kolokythou, 
or Tatoi. 

In the gardeners' market we meet our own gardener, 
Constantine, looking unrecognizably trim in his Sunday 



HOME LIFE IN ATTICA 293 

clothes, and having talked over the purchase with him 
the order for trees is given. The next day the man of 
Acharnae arrives with a cart and delivers fifty fragrant 
little pines into the hands of our grim, silent giant. 
The man of Acharnae has filled his cart with arbutus 
boughs and heather as padding for the little trees on 
their journey. He wears a beautiful rough blue frock, 
with long blue leggings, and seems to have brought a 
cartload of country sweetness into the garden. I should 
like to plant him there beside his trees. One of the 
little pines has a heath clinging to its roots, and the 
silent giant puts them in together, saying that "it does 
not do to separate brothers." It needs two men to plant 
the little trees ; one holds the tree in place while the 
other stamps around the roots. A cartload of good 
earth must be put in with each tree and the cost of 
the earth is usually more than the price of the tree. 
The gardener gets himself a helper on these occasions, 
a red-eyed man called Janni. To-day his eyes are redder 
than ever, for he has lost his mother. When I begin 
to express some sympathy, Constantine interrupts 
brusquely, " It does not matter, she was very old " ; 
adding in an aside, " If you say anything to him about 
it he will go away and will not do any more work." 
Constantine has no sympathy for any sorrows but his 
own. He goes about his delicious occupation looking 
as careworn as a judge. He sighs deeply as I watch 
him at his work and hitches his big trousers over his 
big hips and draws his belt a hole tighter. He is always 
tightening his belt. At first I feared it was hunger, 
but now I know it is habit. When he looks particularly 
gloomy we sometimes question him about his home 
life — a breach of etiquette, but the sound of those sighs 
is irresistible. We can never make out that any greater 
sorrow has befallen him than another addition to his 
family, but I admit that it happens too frequently. Like 



294 DAYS IN ATTICA 

all other Greeks, he is a man of resource. Having 
cherished through the winter a little grass plot that 
we hoped would turn into an English lawn, there arose 
the question of a lawn-mower. '' Never mind," said 
Constantine, " I will borrow one from a friend." The 
lawn was mown successfully through the spring, and 
it was not till the end of the season that we thought 
of asking the name of its kind owner. " It belongs to 
the Heir," said Constantine nonchalantly. " The Crown 
Prince ! Oh, Constantine ! " Constantine looked re- 
proachful as he answered soothingly, *' What would you 
have ? There is but the one lawn-mower in Athens." 

And if Constantine borrows his friends' goods for our 
service it must not be forgotten that he also makes use of 
our property for his own friends. There was the ^' affair 
of the goat " that puzzled and disconcerted us for some 
time. Herds of goats continually grazed outside our 
Temenos gate, and there was one goat that persistently 
found its way into the enclosure. Time after time it 
was hounded out at night, only to be heard bleating 
there again in the early morning. At last our patience 
was exhausted and we impounded it in the back yard, 
waiting for its owner to come and seek for it in peni- 
tence. He came, but in no contrite spirit. 

^^ Why have you shut up my goat ? " he demanded 
angrily. 

'* Your goat was eating our grass," we replied ; " not 
once, but many times." 

'' But have I not given good money for your grass ? " 
he responded. ** Do I not pay your gardener each time 
the goat comes inside your ground for the night ? " 

When remonstrated with, Constantine admitted the 
offence, but apparently regarded us as niggardly and 
censorious for quenching his commercial ardour. It 
seems as though the opportunity to make a little money 
in an improper way is a far sorer temptation to some 



HOME LIFE IN ATTICA 295 

spirits than that of taking money outright. One excellent 
Greek manservant wrecked an otherwise promising 
career in London by using his pantry window as a 
sponge shop. His friends in Athens sent him large 
consignments of sponges and these were retailed at a 
profit, to tradesmen and others who frequented the 
house. 

There was always something awful about this silent, 
melancholy gardener of ours, with his bare feet, his big 
knife, and his intimacy with the great ones of the earth ; 
but I was only once really frightened by him. I was 
going my rounds with a petroleum can, leaving a few 
drops of oil on the little cisterns from which he irrigates 
the garden and in which the mosquitoes breed. The 
proceeding was unpopular with him, for he had no faith 
in its effects on the mosquitoes and suspected an evil 
influence on the flowers. On this particular day he came 
striding across the garden shouting at me. I took no 
heed and went on with my job. At last he came up 
to me, repeated the loud unknown word, and then 
put out his tongue and hissed. I fled, and it was not 
until the evening that my interpreter explained that 
Constantine had been trying to warn me of a dangerous 
snake which he had seen in the tangled flower-beds. 

This, by the way, is one more illustration of a fact 
constantly brought home by life in a foreign country, 
namely that superfluous kindness is the most fruitful 
source of misunderstanding. You admire a peasant 
woman's baby and she spits at it to avert the evil eye. 
You try to photograph a beautiful child and she runs 
away in terror. You offer her eggs or sandwiches and 
she throws them to the ground because the Church 
is fasting. On the other hand also we shrink when 
our muleteer offers us a titbit of smoked octopus which 
he has drawn out of his sash. We are half-hearted about 
the unripe artichokes that some friendly peasant presses 



296 DAYS IN ATTICA 

upon us and we do not care much for the amateur 
guides and interpreters who attach themselves to us in 
gratuitous and quite disinterested kindness. 

There are many pitfalls on the unfamiliar ground ; 
our best motives are misunderstood ; our kindest 
actions prove unkindness. For a time at least we must 
be content to stand apart in a silent benevolence. But 
when this stage is passed, when the ground is no longer 
unfamiliar, when we have learned to understand and to 
make ourselves understood, there follows a rich reward. 
Mutual distrust slowly changes into a friendship which 
never quite loses its glamour. As foreigners we are still 
surrounded with a halo of romantic interest that assuredly 
does not belong to us at home. Even our oddities seem 
attractive. And to us our Greek friends are jewels in a 
goodly setting. Thoughts of them are tinged with 
memories of their radiant country, the tingling air, the 
luminous hill-sides, the uplifted Acropolis. 



CHAPTER XIII 

THE ATTIC COUNTRY-SIDE 

I 

DWELLERS ON THE SOIL 

FOR permanent residence Athens has not the 
inexhaustible resources of most old towns, but 
as a centre for daily expeditions she is rivalled 
only by Rome. In early spring the tide of flowers over- 
flows her doorsteps and the country calls irresistibly. 
Within the radius of an afternoon's walk you may visit 
the gorge of Chalandri, famous for its blood-red anemones ; 
or the rather desolate little hill of Colonos ; or you may 
explore the hinterland of the Tourkovouni range and 
find yourself at once in a world whose neighbourhood 
you little suspected. The low, sweet-smelling shrubs 
spread over the open country give this the character of 
a Greek moorland. The town is hidden from view by 
the spurs of Lycabettus, and here and there the symme- 
trical masses of a pine throw a broad blot of shadow over 
the red earth and silver-green vegetation. If you prefer 
the cultivated ground take the tram to the market gardens 
of Kolokythou and spend an hour among the narcissus 
and violets ; you will get a new idea of the Acropolis 
when you see it framed by the flowering branches of 
the almond and peach-trees. Those gardens are full 
of pictures. Large open tanks reflect dark cypresses 

297 



298 DAYS IN ATTICA 

and pink blossom, with the changing mauve and grey 
shadows on the hills behind. 

Attica is above all things the place for a pedestrian. 
Whereas carriage-roads are scarce, a good walker can 
always strike a line for himself from one landmark to 
another and find on the way a hundred delights un- 
recorded in Baedeker. The familiar hills take unfamiliar 
shapes, the long coast gives an assurance of some sea- 
view from every height, the undulating lines of the 
middle distance are sometimes firm and shapely where 
the rocky framework of the country shows itself, or 
blurred and rounded where the low growth covers it 
with a grey veil. Here and there the stony stretches 
are broken by the figure of a shepherd with his herd of 
black and white sheep and goats. In the open country 
all is austere and dun, except where the candid blue 
of the sea runs up into the landscape and lies in the 
midst of it like a jewel. Among the stones grow low 
sweet-smelling shrubs of a soft inconspicuous grey-green. 

There is, however, a significance in the gravity of 
Attica's flowing lines and the reserve of its colouring ; 
dun and sepia and white. It is like a restful statement 
of essential fact ; there is no sensational episode, no 
headlong cataract, no Byronic precipice, but instead an 
ordered tranquillity, waiting only for the inspiration 
of dawn or sunset to flash into unbelievable purple and 
gold. Those who have seen a crimson evening turn into 
a twilight where purple lingers on into the night will 
never again say that Attic scenery is wanting in colour. 
Nevertheless, it is not for these supreme moments that 
Attica must be loved, but rather for the subtleties of her 
noonday harmonies and the poetry of her barren places. 

The real spring of the Attic year follows the first rains 
in October. It is affectionately known as '^ the little 
summer of Saint Demetrius," but in reality it is less 
summer than spring. The trees put out new green buds, 



THE ATTIC COUNTRY-SIDE 299 

a fresh crop of grass covers the brown slopes, and the 
plants which have their period of repose during the 
summer drought begin to flower. The roses which came 
to an end with June now blossom again. The woods 
are full of crocus and cyclamen. In November the 
temperature falls rapidly. Tov *Ayiov 'Av^piov av^peve 
ZoKpuo,^ says the old proverb. During the winter there 
is much rain, the winds are bitterly cold, and there 
may be snow or frost. There is, however, usually a 
spell of fine warm days in December or January. These 
seem to have been long characteristic of the Athenian 
climate. To the ancients they were known as the 
halcyon days {aXKvovi^eg). In midwinter a fortnight 
of warm weather was looked for, during which the sea 
was calm and the halcyon (kingfisher) could build its 
nest on the sea. February has the reputation of being 
the month for rain, March for wind. The statistics 
taken at the Observatory during the last fifty years show 
that there is usually a cold side to March. In April the 
temperature is ideal, though strong breezes make it better 
for travel on land than by water. May is the month for 
cruising. It is also the harvest-month, for the corn is 
cut for fodder while still green. By June the summer 
heats have already begun. The hot weather lasts till 
October, and the most trying time of the year comes 
towards the end of September, before the fall of the first 
rains. 

On the whole the climate of Attica seems much the 
same to-day as it was two thousand years ago. The 
greatest difference is found in the diminished rainfall 
due to the disappearance of the forests. Yet even this 
difference cannot be excessive, as both Plutarch and 
Strabo show that all the rivulets of Attica, including 
even the Cephissus, ran dry in summer. The dryness 

^ An untranslatable play on words : " With Saint Andrew's Day 
the cold increases." 



300 DAYS IN ATTICA 

of the Attic climate is due not to a low rainfall but 
to an extremely rapid evaporation. It is this that gives 
the atmosphere its peculiar scintillating brilliance ; the 
dryness of the air reveals minute detail in distant 
objects, and yet there is a tremulous vibration in the 
light which restores to the view that touch of unreality 
which the exceeding clearness might have destroyed. 
The Athenians of Euripides' day "walk with delicate 
feet through the most luminous ether." Ovid sees the 
hills round Athens through a purple glow, and from 
before the days of Plutarch, the Athenians loved to trace 
a naive connection between the keenness of their intellect 
and the fine Attic atmosphere. The simile pleases still. 
The mind of the Greek thinker had indeed something 
akin to this atmospheric quality that pierces to a definite 
truth without losing the luminous vision of the poet. 

The Boeotians who lived in a heavier climate were 
considered dull and boorish. " Boeotian swine " Pindar 
calls them. There was not much wrong with them really, 
but like many another they suffered from being set beside 
a more brilliant neighbour. They were the Teutons 
and the men of Athens were the Gauls of ancient time. 

The details of Attic landscape are often unlovely. 
There are crumbling mud walls, dilapidated balconies, 
and untidy corners in every village. Man's handiwork 
when it is not unfinished is out of repair, and this is 
a depressing fact which Nature does not attempt to hide. 
Here is no luxuriant vegetation to screen heaps of rubbish 
behind a tangle of dog-rose. There are no creepers to 
hold together the rafters of a stooping house. There 
seems little actual want in Attica, but the living is hard. 
Poverty, which in Italy is picturesque, in Greece becomes 
ugly. The garments both of men and women are of 
solid homespun cotton, made in cool light shades, blue, 
grey, or white. The kerchiefs wrapped round head and 
throat are usually white or pale yellow. Clean white is 



THE ATTIC COUNTRY-SIDE 301 

the luxury of the Greek peasant. It is exhilarating to see 
the energy with which a woman cheerfully washes at 
the spring the eighteen yards of white cotton that 
compose her husband's fustanella (kilt), as well as his 
white felt leggings and rough woollen coat, and the pride 
with which he dons his clean kilt on a feast day and 
swaggers down the street with the ample folds swinging 
from the solid leather pouch on his waist. 

A dirty fustanella is very seldom seen except on an 
Albanian. The true Albanian never washes his. The 
Greek, on the other hand, is scrupulous in his love of 
clean linen. 

The absence of strong colour in the dress of the 
Greek peasants may be a heritage from Turkish times 
when the wearing of red was punishable by death and 
the highest ambition of the Greek was to remain 
inconspicuous. 

On feast days the pale tints of country cotton give 
way to a parade of colour. The women wear em- 
broidery on their sleeves, jackets, aprons, skirts, and 
handkerchiefs ; and as many gold ornaments as possible 
are added. The men have embroidered jackets and 
waistcoats and bright scarves round their waists. Until 
a few years ago the colours of these embroideries were 
taken from rich vegetable dyes. 

The plain of Athens is sheltered to some extent by 
its circle of hills, but Athens gets a cold spell when 
Parnes and Pentelicus are themselves snow-covered. 
Leake with dry humour speaks of the Cephissian Plain 
as being "inconveniently ventilated." 

The population of modern Attica is composed of 
three distinct races. The town is the home of the Greek 
proper. The blood in his veins is mingled, but in 
default of more direct heirs he claims the heritage of 
the ancient race. The language that he speaks is more 
closely allied to classical Greek than Italian is to Latin. 



302 



DAYS IN ATTICA 



A traveller of the seventeenth century reports that the 
Greek language is being corrupted " not so much by the 
mixture of other tongues as through a supine reckless- 
ness." He adds, however, that " there be yet of the 
Laconians that speak so good Greek (though not 
grammatically) that they understand the learned and 
understand not the vulgar." The Greek language as 
spoken to-day contains foreign elements, but the body 
of the language is still there. Thanks to the spread of 
education and the ardent patriotism of the Press it is 
rapidly changing, and wherever possible classical roots 
are introduced. The living, vigorous tongue of the 
peasant population is being overlaid with this news- 
paper jargon, and it is strange to see how even a man 
of no education seems to grasp instinctively the 
meaning of a classical term when he hears it for the 
first time. The next generation will hardly be able to 
understand the language of the Klephtic ballads. 

The country districts are populated by industrious 
Albanians. They seem more Greek than the Greeks 
themselves. They are probably Illyrians and have 
lived under conditions similar to those which formed 
the races who came into Greece from the North. They 
fought like lions through the War of Independence and 
on the nation's resurrection their dress was chosen as 
the national costume. The King's guard is largely re- 
cruited from these strapping highlanders, who look very 
fine in their clean white kilts and jackets embroidered 
with black for everyday wear, and with gold for full 
dress. 

The oldest Albanian settlement in Greece seems 
to date from the eleventh century, but throughout the 
ages and especially during the seventeenth century the 
Greek stock has been invigorated by the influx of these 
hardy mountaineers. In the fourteenth century Pedro IV 
of Aragon, one of the Spanish absentee Dukes of 



THE ATTIC COUNTRY-SIDE 303 

Athens, found his districts so much depopulated that he 
offered the Albanians two years' exemption from taxes 
if they would settle in Attica. They retain their own 
language, and the women in the remoter villages often 
have no Greek. The peaceful invasion is still going on 
and the mountains rear a race of men who reinforce 
the feebler stock in the plains. 

The third race is the shepherd Vlachs, whose original 
home was, as their name implies, in Wallachia, Racially 
they are a most interesting study. It is seldom that one 
people lives long within the borders of another without 
losing its individuality. Not so the Vlachs. They are 
a shepherd people, making no permanent settlements 
and still retaining a tribal organization. The shepherd- 
chief is father and lawgiver for the tribe. Intermarriage 
with Greeks or Albanians is forbidden. In winter they 
bring their flocks to the low ground. The foot of 
Hymettus is one of their favourite haunts. In summer 
their settlements are seen high up among the hills. Like 
Swiss and Norwegians and other pastoral highlanders, 
their life is regulated by the migration from summer 
pasturage in the hills to winter pasturage in the 
plains. They dwell partly in tents, partly in strange 
dome-shaped huts built of earth or sticks : there are 
also shelters for the sheep and lambs, and the whole 
circular enclosure is fenced in with a low wattled 
barrier. Seen from below it looks like a brown 
fungus growth on the mountain-side. Seen close at 
hand brown is still the prevailing tint. In the shade 
of the nut-brown house a brown mother sits nursing 
a brown baby, while brown sheep and goats saunter 
round the pen. The only note of contrast in this 
general brownness is found in the wrappings of the 
baby and the white coats of some of the flock — but 
all are slowly merging into the general harmony. 
These settlements are often left to the care of the 



304 DAYS IN ATTICA 

women while the men are away on the hills. They 
are therefore guarded by fierce dogs, the only real 
enemies that need be feared in Attica. I shall never 
forget my reception on visiting a Vlach settlement on 
the lower slopes of Hymettus. As I crossed the bridge 
of the stream dividing the village from the road every 
little hut sent out a dog, and no sooner was my foot 
on the further shore than the whole pack came down 
upon me like an army. Fortunately it was by no means 
a silent army and the tumult brought some Vlach women 
to their doors. Seeing that I belonged to their own 
harmless sex, they called the dogs off and made me 
welcome in their smoky little wigwams. Experience 
shows that if we leave the settlements at a safe distance 
it is not likely that the dogs will molest us. As a race 
the Vlachs are thrifty and generous. Many of the 
stately public buildings in Athens have been built by 
patriotic Vlachs who have died rich men and left their 
fortunes to their country. 

The Greeks, the Albanians, the Vlachs, these are the 
three races that now hold the lands of Attica. It is 
fruitless to discuss their exact relationship to their 
predecessors the Ancient Greeks. Each individual un- 
consciously seems to reveal his origin, from Greek or 
barbarian, from slave or freeman. On some mountain- 
side a beautiful woman greets us with a bend of the 
head so perfect in its measured gravity that we feel at 
once that we are in the presence of the lineal descendant 
of some old Greek or Byzantine house. Some peasant- 
host, sharing our evening meal, shows those instinctive 
good manners which remind us of a civilization that was 
old when our forefathers were but naked hunters. 

As regards the humbler dwellers on the soil, the flora 
and fauna of Attica, much has been lost even within the 
memory of this generation. From the descriptions of 
travellers in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries we 



THE ATTIC COUNTRY-SIDE 305 

know that Attica was once rich in singing-birds, game, 
and wild animals. Chandler mentions doves, pigeons, 
thrushes, wild turkeys, the red-legged partridge, wood- 
cock, snipe, teal, widgeon, duck, owls, and cranes. He 
also throws some light on their disappearance. " There 
is," he says, ^* a small bird called by the Greeks Sycophas 
(fig-birds), because when the figs are ripe they settle in 
quantities on the trees. If frightened away they return 
almost immediately, and a person sitting concealed may 
fire upon them with little intermission. They are eaten 
roasted entire, each in a vine leaf, and are counted a 
delicacy." Alas for the greed of bird and peasant ! The 
woods are silent now, except when the warmth of 
summer brings the irrepressible nightingale. As regards 
the larger animals, Chandler mentions wolves, deer, and 
foxes. Boars and roe-deer are still found in the royal 
preserves on Pentelicus : jackals and foxes are not 
uncommon. Wolves are no longer found in Attica, but 
they become a terror in Northern Greece when the 
cold drives them down from the hills. 

The most deplorable change that has come over 
Attica since ancient times is the disappearance of the 
forests, already alluded to. There is reason to believe 
that all the hills round Athens, including even the 
barren shoulders of Hymettus, were once covered with 
trees, but until the last few years nothing has been done 
to preserve them. The goats eat the young trees ; the 
charcoal-burners help themselves where they will ; 
the landowners cut down without replanting, while the 
pines are gashed for resin. Lastly, whole stretches are 
laid waste by fire, either as the result of carelessness or 
by shepherds who wish to make new pasture for their 
flocks. The disappearance of the trees is followed by 
the disappearance of the plants which they have shel- 
tered, and after the plant-life has gone the soil is soon 
washed by rain from the steep hill-sides. What has 



306 DAYS IN ATTICA 

been a wood becomes a bare rock, and the evil that has 
been done seems irremediable. There is now a forestry 
league in Athens which is doing much good work in 
setting young plantations on the lower hills which still 
keep their soil, but in the older forests it is to be feared 
that the destruction still goes on. 

The introduction of orange and lemon-trees has also 
done much to alter the appearance of the country. In 
Attica these are only found in enclosed gardens, occa- 
sional patches of heavy green. We must go to the 
stretch of coast opposite the Island of Poros to know 
what Greek lemon-groves can be, and to the plains of 
Laconia to see the oranges at their best. There they 
stretch for miles and the air is fragrant with their 
blossom. 

Attica's wealth of spring flowers comes as a surprise 
to any one who has seen it first at the barren seasons of 
the year. The late Professor Heldreich, the most amiable 
of men, and for many years Director of the Botanical 
Gardens in Athens, studied the Attic flora and divided 
them into four natural groups : like the tribes of old we 
have the flowers of the coast, the plains, and the hills ; 
to these he adds a fourth group, the flowers of the 
mountains, i.e, those that grow above an altitude of 
2,000 feet. Below 2,000 feet the flora is almost identical 
with that of the western Mediterranean ; there are only 
eight varieties found that belong to the East rather than 
to the West. On the higher ground the oriental varieties 
increase with each upward stage. The group of mountain 
plants is the richest and most interesting in Greece, 
and deserves a more specialized study than has yet 
been given to it. In Attica the best hunting-ground for 
the botanist is on the upper ranges of Parnes and 
Pentelicus. 

The slopes of the lower hills are mostly covered with 
different varieties of evergreen shrubs with thick fleshy 



THE ATTIC COUNTRY-SIDE 307 

leaves. This type of shrub is sometimes collectively 
known by the Corsican name Maquis, and the plants 
here are known as those of the Maquis region. Myrtle 
{Myrtis communis). Arbutus in three kinds {Aiidrachne, 
Intermedia, and Unedo), Rhamnus {Rhamnus gracca), 
and Lentisc {Pistachia lentiscus) are frequently found 
growing together to a height of three or four feet, 
with little bells or bright berries shining among the 
heavy green foliage. 

Ovid gives a fragrant list of the plants that grew on 
Hymettus : ^^ The Arbutus, the Rosemary, the Laurel, 
the dark Myrtle, the leafy Box, the frail Tamarisk, the 
slender Cytisus, and the graceful Pine." ^ 

Below the hill region come low sterile slopes of 
limestone or mica. From the distance they look quite 
barren and are locally known as Xerovouna, or ** desert 
hills." On approaching them we find that they are 
covered with small bushy plants of a type entirely 
different from those of the Maquis region. Instead of 
green fleshy foliage, these have small grey-green leaves 
usually covered with tiny hairs. These hairs protect the 
leaf from the rapid evaporation, which would otherwise 
scorch the tender surface. They enable the plant to 
absorb each drop of moisture slowly and to hold its 
own in a shadeless region. To the Greeks this type of 
plant is known by the collective name Phrygana, literally 
^' fuel," for which the nearest English equivalent is 
** brushwood," but the English conveys something much 
less delightful than that which the Athenian thinks of 
when he speaks of Phrygana. These low-growing 
shrubs have a spicy fragrance comparable only to the 
sweetness of a Scotch moor, yet whereas the Scotch 
moor is fragrant of one plant only these Greek moors 
have a very symphony of scents. Heath (Erica arhorea), 
Thyme {Thymus capitatus), Lavender (Lavandula stoe- 
* Ovid, " Ars Amatoria," iii. 687 ff. 



308 DAYS IN ATTICA 

chas)j Broom (Genista acanthoclada), and Cistus (Cistus 
creticus and salviafolius), each in turn remind you sweetly 
of their presence while your feet crush their leaves. 

In former times this fragrant undergrowth must have 
come right up to the walls of Athens, but now Athens, 
like many other eastern cities, is surrounded by an 
increasing circle of desolation. The brushwood is used 
as fuel for bakers' ovens. There are peasants who make 
their livelihood by cutting it in the country and bring- 
ing it into the town on donkeys. The fuel weighs light 
and is piled high, so that the beast seems lost in his load. 
A string of seven or eight such donkeys may be met 
trotting into the town on any fine morning. Each has 
a bell and each bell a different note. The peasants 
striding behind add their own musical cries to the 
harmony. A brushwood-gatherer seems always in 
morning spirits, and indeed his calling is a merry one. 
When the brushwood is stripped from the slopes, the 
land inevitably becomes a desert, for many delicate 
flowers such as Anemone (Anemone coronaria)y Catchfly 
(Silene vespertina), Grape Hyacinth {Miiscari commu- 
tatum) ; and the Love-in-a-mist (Nigella arvensis) of 
English cottage gardens are now left without any shelter 
and their roots are quickly parched. 

The flowers of the plains include those found in river- 
beds as well as the flowers of cultivated fields and fallow 
ground. The most conspicuous in the former category 
is the beautiful Oleander (Nerium oleander) y which 
marks the hidden moisture of a river-bed long after 
its surface is a summer furnace. In the cultivated fields 
travellers from Wheler onwards have not failed to 
mark the glowing Papaver Rhceas, It is abundant 
as our English poppy, but of a deeper crimson, with a 
rich black centre shaped like a heart. In the more 
sheltered places the scarlet anemone spreads another 
crimson carpet. The flowers of this region are so 



PLA TE xrr 




o 



THE ATTIC COUNTRY-SIDE 309 

numerous that it seems impossible to select any as 
specially characteristic. They star the olive-groves like 
the foreground of a Pre-Raphaelite picture, and shine like 
Dante's vision of the meadow over which Matilda 
walked — " la gran variazion dei freschi Mai." The 
flowering fruit-trees are a joy in February and March. 
There is every shade of pink blossom, from the pale 
flush of the quince to the blood-red pomegranate flower 
hanging on slender down-dragged branches. The un- 
fruitful Judas tree is a deep magenta rose. On such a 
tree, says legend, the faithless disciple hanged himself, 
and the tree must still bear blossoms of crimson guilt. 
The flowers of the coast region are inconspicuous and 
sturdy little fellows, growing on the sandy dunes or in 
the salt marshes by the seashore. They lay no claim 
to beauty, but greet us as friends and fellow-travellers 
when we recognize among them many that are equally 
at home on the shores of our own North Sea. 



II 

AN ATTIC CEMETERY 

The Athenian Ceramicus is still sheeted in spring with 
Asphodel. In itself the plant is hardly beautiful. The 
straight juicy stem bears small scentless flowers of a dim 
pink, each petal marked with a darker crimson stripe. 
The leaves, rich and glossy, are left behind by the tall 
spike of blossom. Yet without colour and without grace 
there is a fascination in the Asphodel that is not only due 
to its beautiful name and to its association with Greek 
poetry. Where it grows in abundance there is an effect 
of pale-rose waves, almost foamy in lightness, rising from 
the cold blue-green shadow of the foliage. Was it only 
because it grew in the cemeteries outside their city walls 
that the Greeks made the Asphodel the flower of death, 



310 DAYS IN ATTICA 

the only flower in Hades ? Or was it also something 
mysterious, colourless, scentless, lifeless in the flower 
itself? 

This Athenian cemetery still has many of the old 
tombstones in place. Though it now lies inside the 
town, it gives a clear impression of how those old Greek 
burial-grounds looked as they lined the road outside 
each city gate. Recent excavations have shown that the 
monuments for the most part rose high above the pave- 
ment, set on courses of masonry that made the walk 
between seem bordered with high walls. But the wall 
was not continuous. Each tomb had its own slightly 
different angle, and in the monuments themselves there 
was an infinite variety. Many of these have been taken 
to the Central Museum, but some are still left in place. 
Most conspicuous among them is the figure of a fine 
bull standing on a pedestal. The significance of this bull 
as a memorial has never been fully explained, although 
the use of animals on grave reliefs is not unusual. The 
bull was probably emblematical of some quality of 
strength or ferocity in the character of the departed — a 
"John Bull" of the fifth century B.C. 

Near the bull is a beautiful relief representing a woman 
drawing a necklace from a box held in front of her by a 
serving-girl. It is early fourth-century work ; the pro- 
duction of a nameless artist at the best period of Greek 
art. There is a perfect reposeful grace in the lines of the 
lady's figure as she leans languidly back in a chair, whose 
simple lines are only in one place interrupted by her 
falling draperies. The slave, seen in much lower relief, 
is a mere sketch with the chisel, indicating a young girl, 
her figure clearly shown under the slight robe. 

A little further on is another tombstone of about the 
same date. This shows the young warrior Dexileos, who 
was killed in the Corinthian War of 394 B.C. In this 
engagement the Athenians were defeated, yet Dexileos 



THE ATTIC COUNTRY-SIDE 311 

is represented as triumphantly striking down a prostrate 
foe. The attitude is exactly that adopted by modern 
artists for the presentation of Saint George and the 
Dragon. I was not astonished to observe one country- 
man actually point out this relief as Hagios Georgios. 

These two tombstones of Hegeso and Dexileos are 
both typical of the whole spirit that animates the rich 
collection of Attic tombstones from archaic times 
to the Hellenistic age. In all of them the note struck 
seems to be the wish to perpetuate one day out of the 
good life that has vanished rather than to dwell on 
the thought of death. 

The woman sits at her toilet or with her children. 
The man sets out for the chase or charges the enemy ; 
the boy toys with his pet animal and the girl with her 
doll. In no instance is there any hint of the hope of a 
future life that will be worth living. If the soul survives 
the shock of death, its existence in Hades is as a shadow 
among the shadows out of sight of the sun. In spite of 
the hopelessness of this belief the spirit of the tomb- 
stones is not one of despair, but rather the expression 
of a quiet melancholy. It is not until the decadence of 
Greek art has set in that the thought of death is dwelt 
upon, and then it figures only as a hint in the clasped 
hands of parting ; the departed is still presented in the 
full vigour of his earthly life. In spite of the spiritual 
hopes of the later age sepulchral art of Christian times 
has inclined to melancholy, whereas Greek art was 
cheerful. The maker of the Greek grave-relief did not 
emphasize the fact that his subject had died, neither 
did he seek to reproduce an exact likeness. He 
merely represented a personality of general suitability as 
to age and figure. The Christian sculptor from the 
Renaissance onwards has not hesitated to give to grief 
its utmost sting, and has combined a personal likeness 
of the deceased with a figure in which the cold tones of 



312 



DAYS IN ATTICA 



the stone emphasize the death-like rigidity of the features. 
It is in the robust age of good Queen Bess that we come 
nearest to the spirit of Athens ; the funeral monuments 
of Tudor England show the good folk kneeling upright 
at their prayers, with a certain restrained convention of 
attitude that has something distantly akin to the Greek 
spirit. 

The two large rooms in the National Museum at Athens 
are filled with ancient Greek stelce similar to those still 
standing in the Ceramicus. Were it not for the epitaphs 
preserved, one might almost be tempted to suppose 
that the Greek had made his final triumph in the art 
of living and had learned to think without dread of that 
last parting. The epitaphs, however, tell a different 
story. Their very brevity adds a note of poignancy to 
the sorrow. 

This is the single tomb of Nicander's children; the light of a 
single morning ended the sacred offspring of Lysidice. 

Looking on the monument of a dead boy, Cleostes son of 
Menesacchmus, pity him who was beautiful and died. 

Sometimes the epitaph supplies the personal note that 
the sculpture denies : 

Blue-eyed Musa, the sweet-voiced nightingale, suddenly this 
little grave holds voiceless and she lies like a stone, who was so 
accomplished and so famous ; fair Musa, be this dust light over 
thee. 

The daughters of the Samians often require Crethis the teller 
of tales, who knew pretty games, sweetest of workfeilows, ever- 
talking ; but she sleeps here the sleep to which all must come. 

Even the dog is wept for: 



Thou who passest on the path, if haply thou dost mark this 
monument, laugh not, I pray thee, though it is a dog's grave ; tears 



THE ATTIC COUNTRY-SIDE 313 

fell for me, and the dust was heaped above me by a master's hands, 
who likewise engraved these words on my tomb. 

These brief verses bridge the centuries and more than 
any other relics of Greek art draw us into fellowship 
with the tender domestic side of Athenian Hfe ; a side 
which, but for this evidence, might be overlooked. It 
is often suggested that the engrossing claims of citizen- 
ship made the family life seem unimportant, but these 
epitaphs tell a different tale. 

Comparing their spirit with the calm philosophy of the 
reliefs, the difference is striking. It may be that the 
Greeks felt that the intangible beauty of words allowed 
a more poignant representation of grief than was 
permissible in the medium of graven stone. 

The moment to visit the Street of Tombs is a morning 
in early spring while the dew is still on the grass and the 
Asphodels shine in the low sun on that 

Slope of green access, 
Where like an infant's smile over the dead, 
A light of laughing flowers along the grass is spread. 

It was in the early morning that the Athenians brought 
out their dead for burial. Before the sun rose the 
funeral procession would pass the Sacred Gate and 
along the Street of Tombs. The body with the face 
uncovered was carried through the streets on a litter. 
The fare for Charon (who would ferry the spirit across 
the river Styx) was placed in the mouth of the corpse 
and on tables beside it were carried provisions of 
honey-cakes for the last journey, vases of ointments 
or perfumes, and perhaps a sword or mirror showing 
whether the deceased was man or woman. Mourners 
with cropped hair followed the bier, wailing and clad 
in black. 

The great public cemetery seems to have been the 



314 DAYS IN ATTICA 

especial haunt of the Athenian women. The white 
Lekythoi vases which were used for funeral libations 
have appropriate paintings, and show us groups of 
mourners bringing their offerings of food with garlands 
and sashes to deck the tomb. Even after the enlightened 
Greek intelligence had ceased to regard the body as in 
some way hovering round the grave, the old funeral 
customs were continued. Indeed one may question 
whether they have ever quite died out. In Elis I have 
seen the bowl of rice and raisins brought to the grave 
ten days after the burial of the body, and in Thessaly it 
is still customary in the country villages for the relatives 
to assemble round the corpse and be presented to it 
individually and by name. 

But the cemetery was not the haunt of women only. 
Memorial services were also celebrated here in public as 
in the great scene which Thucydides describes : — 

" During the same winter in accordance with an old 
national custom, the funeral of those who first fell in this 
war was celebrated by the Athenians at the public charge. 
The ceremony is as follows: Three days before the 
celebration they erect a tent in which the bones of the 
dead are laid out, and every one brings to his own dead 
any offering which he pleases. At the time of the funeral 
the bones are placed in chests of cypress wood, which are 
conveyed on hearses ; there is one chest for each tribe. 
They also carry a single empty litter decked with a pall 
for all whose bodies are missing and cannot be recovered 
after the battle. The procession is accompanied by 
any one who chooses, whether citizen or stranger, and 
the female relatives of the deceased are present at the 
place of interment and make lamentation. The public 
sepulchre is situated in the most beautiful spot outside 
the walls ; there they always bury those who fall in 
war." 

The time was 431 B.C. The first year of the Pelo- 



THE ATTIC COUNTRY-SIDE 315 

ponnesian War was over; a year which had on the whole 
been favourable to Athens. The dead whom they 
now honoured with a public funeral had fallen in fair 
fight at Phrygia and at Megara. The numbers of the slain 
were not great. There was nothing to hint at the over- 
whelming misfortunes soon to overtake the city. Still, 
the occasion was a memorable one. The youth of 
Hellas who twelve months ago ^*had never seen war and 
were therefore very willing to take up arms " have had 
their first brush with reality. At Megara they had 
conquered, but at Phrygia they had been forced to accept 
defeat. They had endured the still harder discipline 
of staying inactive behind the walls of Athens while the 
land of Attica was laid waste. The power of Pericles 
was as great as ever though his popularity had 
lessened, as Thucydides shows : — 

" The excitement in the city was universal ; the people 
were furious with Pericles, and forgetting all his previous 
warnings they abused him for not leading them to battle, 
as their general should, and laid all their miseries to his 
charge." 

Still it was Pericles who was chosen to speak the funeral 
oration over these first victims of the war. Perhaps 
his measured words of commendation fell coldly on 
ears eager to drink in the praises of their fallen heroes 
and hearts anxious as they looked to the future ? There 
were no honeyed praises for individual soldiers. "They 
are worthy of Athens," he says, and in that brief phrase 
crowns them ; the few words of consolation to the 
mourners have an almost perfunctory sound : " Con- 
gratulate yourselves that you have been happy during 
the greater part of your days ; remember that your life 
of sorrows will not last long, and be comforted by the 
glory of those who are gone." Yet this funeral oration 
which Thucydides puts into the mouth of Pericles is one 
of the most moving and enlightening pieces of prose 



316 DAYS IN ATTICA j 

among all that have survived in the Greek tongue. It is 
Athens that he glorifies and not the men who died for 
her, " for in magnifying the city I have magnified them 
and men like them who made her glorious. ... In 
the hour of trial Athens alone among her contemporaries 
is superior to the report of her. No enemy who comes 
against her is indignant at the reverses which he sustains 
at the hands of such a city ; no subject complains that 
his masters are unworthy of him. And we shall as- 
suredly not be without witnesses ; there are mighty monu- 
ments of our power which will make us the wonder of 
this and succeeding ages ; we shall not need the praises 
of Homer or of any other panegyrist whose poetry may 
please for the moment, although his representation of 
facts will not bear the light of day. For we have com- 
pelled every land and every sea to open a path for our 
valour, and have everywhere planted eternal memorials 
of our friendship and our security. Such is the city for 
whose sake these men nobly fought and died ; they could 
not bear the thought that she might be taken from them ; 
and every one of us who survive should gladly toil on 
her behalf." 



The procession winds out of sight ; a blue haze of 
smoke and thin tongues of flame show that the bodies are 
being burned. Silently the mourners return home for 
the funeral feast. And now a knot of women pass. 
They carry baskets hung with ribbons and garlands of 
parsley and violets. They are coming to decorate a 
grave on the birthday of the dead, or to pay the cere- 
monial visit on the third, ninth, or thirteenth day after 
death. Their white draperies hardly stir the sheath-like 
leaves of the Asphodel. They are the ghosts of the 
Ceramicus. 



THE ATTIC COUNTRY-SIDE 317 

III 

THE SACRED WAY 

Through the Ceramicus and over the Pass of Cory- 
dallus runs the white road to Eleusis — the Sacred Way. 

The last time that I saw Eleusis was on a cloudless 
day in March. Sleepy horses pulled us leisurely up the 
Pass of Daphne. Blue and white butterflies hung over 
the young corn, where there was promise of an ex- 
ceptional harvest, ^*if there be sun enough," said our 
driver, then crossed himself and murmured the more 
pious expression, " if the Lord send us the sun." At the 
top of the pass the cornfields gave way to a groundwork 
of stone and scrub dotted with gay flowers. I remember 
the fragrant grape-hyacinth, blue as lapis lazuli, and 
the crimson anemones glowing in the sun like brimming 
wine-cups. The pines grew closely with a fine velvet 
sheen on their rounded tops. 

As the hills closed behind us shutting Athens from our 
view, it was as though some spell had fallen, as though 
the closing of the hills had shut a gate upon the outer 
world and brought us into an enchanted garden. Was 
it Pan who lingered here, or Apollo, or '' dear Aphrodite," 
whose shrine and rock-cut inscription wait at the next 
turn of the road ? Or was it the ghost-thoughts left by 
processions of singing Mystae who passed so many times 
along this road ? 

Early in the morning, not on such spring days as 
this, but in the burning month of September, the wor- 
shippers of Demeter left the Eleusinium at Athens and 
reached Eleusis by torchlight. Seeing that our sleepy 
horses only took two and a half hours to cover the 
twelve miles, it puzzled us to think how the Mystae could 
have spent the whole day upon the road. To be sure 
there was the jesting at the bridge over the Cephissus, 



318 DAYS IN ATTICA 

when masked peasants mocked the pilgrims and the holy 
Mystae condescended to some buffoonery with their 
tormentors. No doubt also there were offerings to be 
made at the shrines of Zeus, of Cyamites the bean-giver, 
of Apollo, and " dear Aphrodite," and finally at the 
tomb of Eumolpus. Still even with these delays one 
cannot think that those who left Athens at dawn were 
the same as those who reached Eleusis by torchlight ; it 
rather seems probable that all through the day the 
straggling procession of pilgrims poured out through the 
Sacred Gate. Some would prefer the early start and 
accomplish the dusty climb to Daphni before the heat of 
the day ; others would be delayed by toilet or household 
affairs until mid-morning, and others again would start 
in the cool of the evening, and for them would be the 
dramatic arrival by torchlight in the Hall of the Mystae. 

At Daphni we halted for lunch, and, falling under the 
spell of that blessed spot, nearly gave up the expedition 
to Eleusis that we might pass the whole day with Apollo 
of the Laurels. While I was sitting in the church 
puzzling over the marred beauty of the mosaics, the 
solitude was broken by the entrance of a Greek priest 
and a blind man. The priest lit his three candles and 
placed his penny in the plate with a professional jest to 
the custodian. The blind man smiled, fumbled m his 
pockets, and handed to the custodian his three home- 
made candles, made of yellow wax from honeycomb. 
" Are they good ? " he asked proudly. " Very good," 
approved the Phylax, with grave sympathy, and a look 
of proud content went over the blind face. Soon we 
were called to lunch — a luncheon spread on the inevit- 
able little iron table, placed with two massive wooden 
chairs on the borderland of sunny turf and shadowy 
pines. Under these conditions a meal becomes a poem. 

After luncheon we walked on as far as the shrine of 
"dear Aphrodite." Where emperors trod the dust we 



THE ATTIC COUNTRY-SIDE 319 

must at least make a part of our pilgrimage on foot. 
Besides, every Greek is born with right to a siesta after 
his midday meal, and our coachman willingly agreed to 
wait an hour at Daphni and overtake us at the little 
ruined temple, with rock-cut niches and the one 
remaining inscription to " Phile Aphrodite." The stones 
of the shrine have weathered to the same golden-grey as 
the surrounding boulders, and its ruins would be hard 
to find but for the crooked old olive that is our land- 
mark. 

From here the road descends and the pass once more 
opens as the blue Bay of Salamis flashes out. Land- 
locked as a lake it looks, shut in by the mysterious grey 
island which the ancients knew as Salamis, but which 
local affection calls "the baker's roll" {koulouri). Beyond 
this the road is less interesting. Beyond the ridge of 
^galeus it runs between the seashore and the Thriasian 
Plain. The country inland is level and rather desolate, 
reminding one of the region round Phalerum. Both 
have salt marshes won from the sea, and not yet fertile. 
The salt lakes of Eleusis were sacred to Demeter and 
Persephone, though what such barren loneliness had to 
do with the goddesses of fertility it is hard to say. At 
the far end of the bay the white houses of Eleusis crown 
a bit of rising ground, and behind them the mountains 
of Megara show their double peak known as " Kerata," 
or Horns. 

This stretch of road beside the Thriasian Plain is 
associated with that apparition of immortal mystics who 
came to succour their countrymen at the darkest hour 
of the Persian War. Herodotus tells the story on the 
authority of Dicaeus, son of Theocydes, " an Athenian 
who was at this time an exile and had gained a good 
report among the Medes. He declared that after the 
army of Xerxes had, in the absence of the Athenians 
wasted Attica, he chanced to be with Demaratus the 



320 DAYS IN ATTICA 

Lacedaemonian in the Thriasian Plain, and that while 
there he saw a cloud of dust advancing from Eleusis, 
such as a host of thirty thousand men might raise. As 
he and his companion were wondering from whose feet 
the dust arose a sound of voices reached his ear and he 
thought that he recognized the mystic hymn to Bacchus. 
Now Demaratus was unacquainted with the rites of 
Eleusis and so he inquired of Dicaeus what the voices 
were saying. Dicaeus made answer, ^ Oh Demaratus ! 
beyond doubt some mighty calamity is about to befall 
the King (of Persia's) army ! For it is manifest inas- 
much as Attica is deserted by its inhabitants, that the 
sound which we have heard is an unearthly one and is 
now upon its way from Eleusis to aid the Athenians 
and their confederates .... Every year the Athenians 
celebrate this feast to the Mother and the Daughter. 
The sound thou hearest is the Bacchic song which is 
wont to be sung at this festival ' . . . Such was the tale told 
by Dicaeus, the son of Theocydes, and he appealed for its 
truth to Demaratus and other eye-witnesses." 

The ruins of Eleusis are better on the plan than in 
reality. The superimposed periods look delightful in 
their different colours shown on the excavator's plan 
("Journal of Greek Archaeological Society," 1887), and for 
English readers they have been lucidly explained by Dyer 
in his work on the gods of Greece. Standing on the 
spot it is a hard matter to trace the buildings of each 
period, and the spirit of the Mysteries vanishes among this 
jumble of grey stones lying bare to the sky. The beauti- 
ful view of sea and hills brings us no nearer to the past, 
for in the Hall of the Mysteries the outer world was for- 
gotten. But wait till nightfall. Then in the darkness 
and hush, when the stones have melted out of sight, and 
the voices of the Albanian women have quieted them- 
selves in the houses near, it becomes more possible to 
feel the way back to the heart of those mysterious rites 






THE ATTIC COUNTRY-SIDE 321 

and become one of the host of worshippers adoring " the 
great, the wonderful, the most perfect object of mystical 
contemplation, an ear of wheat reaped in silence." And 
yet how different the silence is even on a still night such 
as this. For though hardly a breeze stirs and the surf is 
but a ripple on the beach, faint sounds of animal life are 
coming up in the darkness. A dog barks in the village. 
The frogs croak discontentedly in the distant marshes 
and a bird or bat rustles against the old walls. The 
Greeks of old knew that silence is not a negative but a 
positive thing. There is never a complete vacuum of 
stillness, but only a hushing of the more dominant sounds. 
The silence of a northern night and of a southern noon, 
the silence of a forest, a moor, a sea — what resemblance 
is there between them, and how are they related to this 
silence of a worshipping multitude who come to Eleusis 
to learn " the fair and joyful truth that death is not an 
evil but a blessing to mortals " ? ' 

In the National Museum of Athens one of the most 
beautiful of the early reliefs shows a grave matron hand- 
ing an ear of wheat to a youth while a girl stands by. 
All three figures are in profile and there is an earnestness 
of intention suiting the symbolic action. The girl is 
Persephone, the woman is Demeter, and the youth is 
Triptolemus, the priest-king of Eleusis to whom Demeter 
taught the secrets of corn-growing. 

This Demeter recalls to me another Demeter seen that 
hot noonday as we trudged the Sacred Way. On a clump 
of heath, her back against a fir-tree, sat a woman spinning. 
It was the hour of rest and her children slept around 
her. One lay in a cradle slung from the tree, another was 
on the ground beside her, his head pillowed between her 
knees. The rhythmic movements of her spinning hands 
passed to and fro above his head and seemed to weave a 
slumber-charm. Her brown head and strong neck were 
* Inscription in Eleusis Museum. 

Y 



322 DAYS IN ATTICA 

bent over her task, and she sat enthroned on the heath 
Hke some old Titaness, one with the simple, industrious, 
fruitful mother of all. For the sake of hearing her voice 
I spoke to her. She answered in low tones, " Oh, yes ! 
the children sleep. The day is long to them, poor souls. 
They sleep — we work " ; and she smiled, as Demeter her- 
self might have smiled over the infant Triptolemus — the 
nurse's smile of wisdom and infinite patience. 



IV 

PHYLE 

A climb that winds itself into the heart of the enclosing 
hills, that skirts gorge after gorge, and leads you up 
through thickly-growing pines — one of the few bits of 
Theocritan scenery in Attica ; at the end of three 
hours a mountain fortress and a superb view — this is 
what an expedition to Phyle means. The walls of the 
oblong fortress still show seventeen courses above ground ; 
the closely fitting blocks of stone have a splendid tint of 
golden-brown bitten by patches of orange lichen. The 
fortress stands foursquare on the south-west flank of 
Fames, and thus holds one of the most important passes 
into Attica from Boeotia. The other pass is on the 
north-east of Parnes, Deceleia (p. 333), which lies between 
Parnes and Pentelicus as Phyle lies between Parnes and 
Cithaeron. Phyle is not, however, set at the highest point 
of the pass ; the force established here would still have 
unoccupied heights on the north, but as a post of obser- 
vation its position is unequalled. No boats could slip 
across the Saronic Gulf, no force of Athenians muster in 
the plain, no band attempt the passes of Hymettus but 
the watchman at Phyle would see the lowering of the 
sail or the light glinting on the spears of moving men. 
The whole of the Cephissian Plain from Phalerum to 



THE ATTIC COUNTRY-SIDE 323 

Pentelicus lies in view, clear as an illuminated missal, 
in spite of the well of air, two thousand five hundred feet 
in depth, that swims between. Athens can be seen, but it 
looks only a group of infinitesimal dots and lines. With- 
out the aid of opera-glasses I have made out the dark rec- 
tangular outline of the Acropolis, the lighter pyramidal 
form of the Parthenon, and the gleaming white houses of 
the town. The Bay of Salamis is clear, though Piraeus is 
hidden behind hills. What a fine move of Thrasybulus 
to come up to this eyrie and wait for the moment when 
he could sweep eagle-like on his prey, to deliver the city 
from the tyrants ! 

It was the critical moment of the Peloponnesian War. 
A Persian garrison held Deceleia, a Spartan fleet was 
scouring the Attic coast. Euboea had fallen. Inside 
Athens the Thirty Tyrants had overthrown the demo- 
cracy and had " slain in eight months more than the 
Peloponnesians slew in a war of ten years." They had 
even admitted a Spartan garrison within the sacred 
walls of the Acropolis. Up here in Phyle the upholders 
of democracy, exiled from their city, gathered round 
Thrasybulus, waiting till the hour came to strike. Once 
in midwinter the Tyrants led their forces up these narrow 
mountain gorges and besieged the stronghold, till one 
of those sudden blizzards, such as still sweep down on 
Athens from the Balkan highlands, blocked the moun- 
tain with snow and drove the army back to Athens. 
Again in May when all the country-side was at its gayest, 
the garrison on Phyle saw the Tyrants' hoplites moving 
towards them across the ridges of the Cephissian Plain. 
This time Thrasybulus led the exiles out of their strong- 
hold and surprised the enemy as they rested at the village 
of Acharnse, routing them with loss. 

By this time the force round Thrasybulus seems to 
have grown to about a thousand men, and it can have 
been no easy matter to provision so large a force, even 



324 DAYS IN ATTICA 

in those game-haunted hills. He delayed no longer the 
final venture. It was still May when he led his army down 
from Phyle, crept round the city, and seized the hill of 
Munychia overlooking the Piraeus. About this hill the 
battle was fought which ended the rule of the Tyrants. 
" The evil dream of Athens was over at last," says Pro- 
fessor Bury, "a year and a half of oligarchical tyranny 
and foreign soldiery on the Acropolis." This is one of 
those schoolboy stories that can be yawned over at home 
but which suddenly become dramatic — almost melo- 
dramatic — when read on the spot where the play was 
played. 

We have climbed to Phyle many times. We have 
cowered beneath its massive walls for shelter from a 
wind, icy as that which drove the Thirty back to Athens, 
and we have crept into their shade from the heat of a 
May noonday. There are eagles now in the eyrie of 
Thrasybulus. They sweep their wings, dark above and 
light below, across the mountain gorges. The tinkle of 
sheep-bells comes from the edges of the precipice. You 
can hear the song of the charcoal-burners on the hidden 
Alp below. We passed them on our upward climb — two 
brown-skinned boys, bending over their heap of glowing 
wood. Behind them was the black pyramid of charcoal, 
the green turf studded with anemones, and the pine-trees 
ranged in climbing phalanx. At their feet a small stream 
cut its way through rocks that are worn smooth by the 
wheels of the wagons that brought food to the army 
of Thrasybulus. 

Now and then the single note of a church bell comes 
from ^^Our Lady of the Gorge," a tiny hidden monastery 
perched on a shelf of rock above the torrent — a huddled | 
group of buildings covered with whitewash and Byzan- 
tine paintings. 

Above this monastery rises the tremendous cliff, 
famous in antiquity under the name of Harma — *' the 



I 



THE ATTIC COUNTRY-SIDE 325 

Chariot." Its profile as seen from the AcropoHs is 
striking, but bears more resemblance to the prow of a 
ship than to a chariot. At a certain time of year the 
priest of Apollo watched from the city wall of Athens 
until he saw lightning over Harma, and this was the 
signal for sending the "theoric ship." The episode of 
the ship is picturesque enough in itself, and that the 
moment of its despatch should be dependent on the 
first play of lightning round this purple ridge is glorious, 
even without the additional touch given by the mention 
of the watchman-priest on the city wall. 

V 

TWO CAVES OF PAN 

The Cave of " Pan and the Nymphs " lies on Parnes 
close under the ridge of Harma. To reach it we left the 
train at Khasia and followed the path to Phyle as far as 
Our Lady of the Gorge. Our guide was a little, ugly, 
kind-faced man with a shock of curly hair, a big bushy 
beard streaked with white, and queer crooked legs cased 
in rolls of country cloth. From the monastery he led 
us by steep tracks for another hour and a half until we 
had walked right round Harma ; then we found our- 
selves at a higher point in the same gorge : it is impos- 
sible to go straight up it from the monastery, for the 
stream has worn for itself a narrow channel between 
precipices. As it was we had a difficult scramble to the 
stream when we reached the gorge again ; then we had 
to work our way along the watercourse, over boulders, 
and leaping from ledge to ledge, until at last there 
opened a sort of recess in the cliff. 

By this time our guide had revealed himself. Pan is 
not dead. He still lives in Khasia, and though his goat's 
hoofs are hidden, they are sure enough over ground 



326 DAYS IN ATTICA 

where we fell again and again. We went up a hundred 
feet from the stream bed arid found ourselves on a broad 
platform, over which fig-trees grow. It is enclosed by 
projecting wings of rock, perhaps 50 by 30 feet. There 
were niches for offerings cut in the rock-wall ; here and 
there inscriptions spoke of the forgotten worship, but 
there was no cave, except that the cliff arched a little 
overhead. Then our guide went to the far right-hand 
corner, pulled aside the stem of a young fig-tree, and 
behold ! a black chink through which we squeezed 
one at a time. And now a strange thing happened. 
Pan had been curiously reluctant to answer our ques- 
tions, especially about some pottery which the Germans, 
who visited the place some twenty years ago, de- 
scribed as abounding in the cave. This, they said, 
had given it its modern name of Lychnaritissa — the 
Lamp Cave. Now Pan told us it was impossible to go 
further in ; we should find water up to our necks. 
Luckily we had brought matches and a candle, and this 
baffled Pan. The candle showed no water but a good 
dry floor, extending inwards some twenty feet. We had 
also a trowel and Albanian knife ; with these we dug, but 
found no pottery to speak of. Pan protested there was 
no pottery to be found and tried to hurry us out. Again 
we doubted him just in time, and saw, as our eyes 
became used to the shadow, a sort of arch high up on 
one side near the entrance. Up v/e went and discovered 
the real entrance to the real cave : what we were then in 
was a mere antechamber. This entrance was concealed 
by nature with a cunning imagined by no writer of f 
romance. Once in the arch we saw before us a wide, 
deep pool : beyond it rose a kind of lip a few inches J 
wide, which served to dam back another pool or cistern " 
at a higher level ; beyond this another, making a sort 
of stair of oblong water-troughs leading into the 
darkness. 



THE ATTIC COUNTRY-SIDE 327 

Pan denied that there was anything within, but when 
with infinite care we had managed to stride over the 
first trough, the widest, and had crossed the others, we 
found ourselves again in a big cave nearly a hundred feet 
long. Out came knife and trowel again and we soon 
found Greek fragments ranging from black-figured 
onwards. Further suspicions aroused by loose earth 
outside were confirmed ; it was plain that there had been 
systematic digging in the cave for years past, and the 
reason for Pan's reluctance to let us see the inside of the 
cavern was made plain. 

Pan was sad when we came out, and he became sadder 
still on our regaining the top of the ridge, for he found 
that the mule had broken his tether and was feeding on 
a patch of green corn. It seems that the god has a little 
choraphi or plot of cornland here on the top of the hill, 
whence he can look down on the cave where he used to 
be honoured. The number of broken lamps of all 
periods, which almost make up the floor-soil for feet 
deep, suggest how many pilgrims must have come to the 
cave in spite of its inaccessibility. 

At the monastery we had resined wine and Easter eggs 
on our way down. The Brothers showed us a two- 
handled drinking-cup, quite whole, a present from the 
contraband cave-diggers ; and when we regained Pan's 
village (Khasia) and it became evident that though we 
had discovered his secret we had no intention of betray- 
ing it, the villagers became quite friendly. They gave us 
more resined wine, invited us to join their Easter festivi- 
ties, and improvised queer Albanian verses in honour of 
the strangers who circled with them in the dance. 

THE CAVE OF PAN NEAR VARI 

The region round Hymettus is not often explored, 
partly because of its lack of trees, partly also from the 



328 DAYS IN ATTICA 

state of the roads at its base which make carriage-driving 
a penance. But it is easy to go on foot. The modern 
Athenians know it better than the tourist, for the Httle 
Bay of Voulagmeni with its strange salt lake is in summer 
crowded with families of bathers. The road which leads 
here from Athens, though bare, has a beautiful view of 
Hymettus on the one hand and the Gulf of ^gina on the 
other. It is also rich in classical remains ; foundations, 
boundary-stones, and wells show that this was once an 
inhabited country. The Cave of Vari is beyond doubt 
the proper goal for any pilgrimage in this direction. It 
is one of the most delightful and most remote spots in 
Attica. Hidden away just over the crest of the last spur 
of the Hymettus range, the cave could never be dis- 
covered without a guide. It is in reality more of a pit 
than a cave, for the descent into it is almost perpendicular. 
A fig-tree growing out of the mouth is the solitary land- 
mark that reveals its position among the low scrub of the 
hill-side. No wonder that the ancient Greeks saw here a 
haunt of Pan, Apollo, and the Nymphs, and that in later 
centuries it became a refuge for persecuted Christians. 
This was probably the Cave of the Nymphs on Hymettus 
that was visited by the parents of Plato. One day they 
brought with them their infant son and left him on the 
hill-side while they went into the cave to offer sacrifice. 
On their return they found the babe asleep, while on his 
lips had settled a cloud of bees — a prophecy of the honey- 
sweetness of the grown man's words. So says the legend 
of doubtful authenticity repeated by -<Elian and Olym- 
piodorus. 

This Cave of Pan is not so inaccessible as that near 
Phyle, but it is well hidden. There is no royal road to 
Pan's sanctuaries. Here at Vari you grip the smooth 
silver bole of the fig-tree and drop into a dark hole. 
The guide who has gone before you plants your feet on 
something steep and slippery, and stepping down you 



THE ATTIC COUNTRY-SIDE 329 

find yourself at the entrance of the cave proper, inside 
which there is an unmistakable shrine : rough carvings 
of Pan and the Nymphs with niches cut for lamps and 
offerings. 

One cannot help wondering if the entrance was easier 
in Plato's day or if his parents also had to drop nine 
feet to reach the mouth of the cave. No wonder they 
thought it better to leave baby Plato outside in the 
myrtle thickets. 

In February, 1900, the American School in Athens 
made excavations here. They found no prehistoric 
remains, but there was an inscription stating that this 
is the cave of *^ Archedemus a Nympholept." There was 
also evidence that the cave had been used continuously 
as a shrine from about 600 to 150 B.C. After this it was 
disused for four or five centuries, but in the fourth 
century a.d. it was once more made use of, this time as 
a Christian shrine. Through the Dark Ages the existence 
of the cave seems to have been forgotten except by the 
shepherds who came there for water. The roofs and 
walls are blackened by the smoke from their fires 
of wild thyme. It was rediscovered by Chandler in 

1765. 
These two caves to Pan and the Nymphs on Parnes 

and on Hymettus are alike in their utter loneliness. It 

was to the spirits of the solitude that the offerings in 

these shrines were made. " As the peasant of to-day," says 

Dr. Rouse, " fears the mysterious Neraidhes who can 

bewitch him to death or strike him deaf and dumb, or 

blind, so in ancient days the dweller in solitudes feared 

that panic-madness and nymph-stroke which the god 

and his woodland elves could plague him with." 

Even to-day there can be an element of terror in the 

stillness of these mountain haunts. No singing birds, 

no rustle of friendly animal life in the shrubs around, 

no gentle chatter of frost-bound leaves in winter. I have 



330 DAYS IN ATTICA 

known it silent as a world of ghosts until the distant note 
of sheep-bells came to break the spell, a grateful relief. 
As the peasant in some distant nook of the Tyrol turns 
to the lonely crucifix that greets liim at the head of the 
pass, so the solitary shepherd or huntsman of ancient 
Greece turned to the consolation of his religion to arm 
him against the panic madness that flies blindly from 
a nameless evil. That is the meaning of the thousand 
votive offerings in these two lonely shrines of Pan. 



VI 

THE TOMB AT MENIDI 

The tomb at Menidi is a great domed house scooped 
out under the ground and lined with hewn stone. It 
lies within an hour's drive of Athens ; one must make 
sure that the coachman knows the spot, for the tomb is 
hidden. A passage of massive masonry goes deep into 
the earth and leads to a high, narrow door with its pointed 
gable roof made of two stone slabs. Usually these so- 
called beehive tombs are built in a hill-side, but here there 
is hardly any slope in the ground, and one asks in vain 
why such an inconspicuous site was chosen for so 
notable a grave. The size and fine workmanship show 
that this was the tomb of some great ruler. Was this 
perhaps the country seat of the Mycenaean lords of 
Athens ? In the days when what is now bare soil was 
covered with forests these lower slopes of Parnes would 
have been a pleasant refuge from the summer heats. 
Tatoi, the villa of the present King of Greece, is set in 
this direction, somewhat higher on the wooded slopes, 
and Cephissia, the summer resort of modern Athenians, 
is not far off. In classical times this district of Acharnae 
was of strategic importance as barring the foot of one of 
the passes into Boeotia. Its chief village, Menidi, is still 



THE ATTIC COUNTRY-SIDE 331 

the home of charcoal-burners. Here on Easter Monday 
there are great dances of country people dressed in their 
best. These dances are as beautiful and less crowded 
than the more famous Easter dance at Megara. 

In the Mycenaean Room in the National Museum at 
Athens there is a case containing the objects found in 
the tomb at Menidi. If the tomb was inconspicuous, 
it was nevertheless well known. The pottery found in 
it shows an unbroken succession of gifts from Mycenaean 
down to classical times. Through all these ages offer- 
ings were brought here and the tomb was venerated. 
Then, some time during the Dark Ages, the place was 
rifled. The body may have been lapped in gold leaf 
and may have had a thin gold mask over the face, such 
as we see in the Athens Museum brought from the 
graves at Mycenae. In any case there was much to 
attract thieves. The body was carried away, and with 
it must have gone the more valuable contents of the 
grave. All that remained were the clay vases, a few 
beads and ornaments, and some small fragments of gold 
leaf. One delicate bit of ivory with carvings of winged 
beasts also escaped the robbers. 



VII 

CEPHISSIA AND TATOI 

The train for this expedition starts from what is called 
by courtesy ^^the Cephissia station," but in reality the 
so-called station is a spot in the open street marked 
by four splendid palms. The little train stands snorting 
here till the horn blows, then it makes its way slowly 
through the streets of the town, the Patissia suburb, 
and up along the bed of the Cephissus. There is little 
water to be seen in the river, but the gorge is full of 



332 DAYS IN ATTICA 

fruit-trees. After fifteen minutes Heraklion is reached, 
a village colonized by Bavarians who were brought over 
by King Otho as an agricultural experiment. The 
German tongue is still heard in the village, but the 
number of colonists has dwindled and their experience 
has shown that peasants may be excellent husbandmen 
in their own country and yet fail to grapple successfully 
with new conditions. 

After Heraklion the railway turns to the right and 
the climb towards Pentelicus begins. Fifty minutes 
after leaving Athens Cephissia is reached. Until lately 
this was a small village. Its plentiful water supply and 
cool breezes have now made it the fashionable summer- 
resort of the Athenians. Houses showing the most 
startling varieties of architecture have sprung up in 
great numbers, and are for the most part surrounded 
by charming gardens. In spring when the flowers are 
out, and before the season of bands and toilettes, it is 
a pleasant place to stay in and a good centre for ex- 
peditions around Pentelicus and Parnes. It is interesting 
to learn from Gellius that even in the days of the 
Roman Empire Cephissia was a summer resort for 
wealthy Athenians. He gives a delightful description 
of the country-house of H erodes Atticus : — 

" Whilst I was staying in the schools of Athens, 
Herodes Atticus, the illustrious consul endowed with 
such talents of Greek oratory, often invited me to his 
country-houses in the neighbourhood of the town. He 
also invited Servilianus, a person of some distinction, 
and other compatriots who had come to Greece for the 
sake of culture. One day during the heats of early 
autumn he gathered us together in his country-house 
at Cephissia, where we found devices for combating 
the ardent fires of the day : thick shadow of deep woods, 
long walks of soft turf, buildings set to take advantage 
of the air, baths filled with fresh pure water, and 



THE ATTIC COUNTRY-SIDE 333 

fountains whose murmur mingling with the song of 
birds made melodious this pleasant retreat/' 

The country-seat of Herodes has vanished, but this 
description would apply almost equally well to the summer 
residence of the present Greek Royal Family, which is 
placed a few miles further up the mountain at Tatoi. 

The late King placed his villa and farm near the 
ancient Pass of Deceleia. It is an hour's drive from 
Cephissia and may be visited when the royal family 
are not in residence. The road passes first over open 
country, fragrant with thyme and heather, and with 
backward views of Athens seen across the plain. After 
the railway to Chalcis has been crossed the road begins 
to wind uphill, and the traveller accustomed to the arid 
slopes of Attica cannot but be astonished at the mag- 
nificent forests of oak and pine that mark the King's 
domain. The trees are not only plentiful but are also 
perfect individually and show how much might be done 
in Attica if proper care were taken of them. The King's 
forests are not wounded for resin, neither are they 
harmed by the fires which the shepherds wantonly 
light in other parts of Greece when they wish to secure 
a new piece of open country for their flocks. The villa 
itself stands high and there is a good view of the 
Acropolis and Lycabettus from the garden terrace. A 
small inn at the Palace gates gives good accommodation 
for a short visit. A prolonged stay is not allowed unless 
royal permission has been granted. From Tatoi the 
expedition to the top of Parnes and back can be 
accomplished in five hours. 

Between Pentelicus and the plain of Marathon there 
is interposed a belt of wooded fort-hills which may be 
explored from Cephissia. A walk of seven miles round 
the northern flank of Pentelicus, past the modern marble 
quarries, brings you to the spot where Dionysus was first 
worshipped in Attica and where Thespis, a native of the 
hamlet, tried his first experiments in tragedy. 



334 DAYS IN ATTICA 

VIII 
CORINTH 

To count a day at Corinth as one of the days in 
Attica is hardly a contradiction. A visit to Corinth 
comes naturally to the tourist in Athens as a day of 
legitimate sightseeing. It is only fifty miles from Athens 
and the best trains manage the distance in something 
under three hours. The Patras express stops at 
Corinth and the knowing traveller alights to have the 
rum omelette for which the little refreshment-room is 
famous. The railway runs through modern Corinth, 
a town that is obviously one of Otho's failures. It was 
laid out in broad lines with open spaces and squares 
that would befit a capital. But all that has come to fit 
itself to this ambitious ground-plan is a smattering of 
low houses. It has a beautiful situation beside the Gulf, 
with Parnassus rising beyond it, and one regrets that 
it has been planned on these uncomfortably large lines. 
It might have made such a pretty village. 

Old Corinth is four miles inland on gently rising 
ground at the foot of a huge *Mion's head" Acropolis — 
a precipitous crag that one might call a knob if it were 
smaller. This is Acro-Corinth. It towers up above the 
bare plain, crowned with mediaeval fortifications, three 
lines of crenellated masonry, girdling walls and towers. 
Acro-Corinth is visible from Athens — one of the two 
"horns" of the Peloponnese, Mount Ithome, near 
Messene, being the other. These are not to be con- 
fused with the other Horns above Megara. 

Ancient Corinth lies beneath this crag. The American 
School are excavating here and have laid bare the heart 
of the Roman city round about the early Greek temple 
of Apollo, of which half a dozen monolithic columns 



THE ATTIC COUNTRY-SIDE 335 

are still upright. It has been a heart-breaking business 
for the excavators. The accumulations of earth in the 
last 1,500 years passes all belief. Again and again they 
have had to go down twenty feet before reaching the 
Roman pavement and the scanty remains of the Greek 
city lie five or ten feet lower still. The Roman plun- 
derers left little of the splendours of Hellenic Corinth. 
The Roman city that rose on its ashes was gorgeous in 
a way, but generations of tasteless and slovenly By- 
zantine citizens gradually spoiled its best features and 
overlaid its streets and buildings with all sorts of vulgar 
accretions. 

The Americans have a light railway that empties their 
" spoil-earth " on a " dump-heap " outside the central 
field of ruins ; the mere mechanical task of removing 
the dug earth to a convenient distance keeps half their 
workmen busy; progress is slow, and finds compara- 
tively few. But there are ecstatic moments. Once in a 
corner of the Agora the earth gave way and a digger 
tumbled into a chasm, from which he presently 
emerged, with eyes like saucers, crying, " Evreka 
kolonais ! Evreka agalmata ! " " I've found columns ! 
I've found statues ! " 

This was a subterranean fountain-house with a roof 
supported by square piers. The statues were bronze 
lions' heads which served as water-spouts. In Greek 
days this place for drawing water had stood open and 
above ground ; the reservoir is under a brow or over- 
hanging crust of limestone which limits one side of the 
market-place. When the Roman Agora was built the 
pavement was laid six or more feet higher and the old 
fountain-house roofed and retained as a subterranean vault 
approached by a narrow stair. 

Corinth had two larger and more famous fountains, 
Glauke and Pirene, and one can still see their rock- 
cut reservoirs and imagine their ancient splendour. But 



336 DAYS IN ATTICA 

for me, as for Strabo, the real Pirene is the spring near 
the summit of Acro-Corinth, where in the golden age 
Pegasus, the winged steed, came down to crop the grass 
and flowers that then surrounded it. Here, while he 
dallied too long one summer day, a hand was laid on 
his mane and the wild beautiful creature lost his freedom. 



IX 
CHALCIS 

Since the opening of the new railway Chalcis can easily 
be visited in a day from Athens. After leaving the little 
junction of Schematari, the train runs quickly down the 
low hills that here skirt the shore. On approaching 
Chalcis there is a good view of the town with the heights 
of Eubcea behind and the narrow channel of the Euripos 
in the foreground. It is through these straits that there 
run those currents whose unaccountable ebb and flow 
have excited the wonder of philosophers from the 
earliest times and still remain an extraordinary natural 
phenomenon. 

In classical times Chalcis was a rich commercial city, 
founder of many colonies, and the rival of Eretria in that 
struggle for the trade of the Black Sea routes, which 
influenced the early course of Hellenic history. Taken by 
Venice in 1209, it regained under her the commercial im- 
portance which it had lost under Rome. Under Turkish 
rule it formed the centre of a large agricultural district and 
had claims to be considered the capital of Greece. Here 
were the head-quarters of the Turkish Admiral Pasha ; 
and also the residences of the few rich landowners, 
among whom the property of the Island of Euboea was 
divided. Recent demolition of the walls has merged the 
old town (still locally known as the Castro) with the new 



THE ATTIC COUNTRY-SIDE 337 

residential quarter which has grown up along the North 
harbour. 

In the Southern harbour much of the Venetian fortifi- 
cation still remains. Even without the bas-reliefs of 
St. Mark's Lion, which have now been removed to the 
local museum, there is no mistaking the steep walls that 
rise abruptly from the water. They are quite typical 
Venetian work. 

The Church of Hagia Paraskevi dates originally from 
the early Byzantine period. ^ In form it is a wide basilica, 
and there are remains of beautiful decoration in the 
interior. Two columns stand outside the west entrance. 
These were within the church until the earthquake of 
1853 threw down the old fagade, which was afterwards 
rebuilt behind them. The original building extended 
from beyond the pillars now outside the doors to the square 
piers which occur between the third and fourth columns of 
the interior. The later building (east of the piers) has wider 
intercolumniations, and a ground-level at least two feet 
higher than the old church in which the bases of the 
columns have sunk out of sight. This second church is 
to a certain extent dated by the tombstone of Lippamanus, 
a Venetian nobleman, whose tablet in the wall of the North 
chapel bears the date 1398. 

In both periods the decoration is an interesting feature. 
The monogram of Christ on the pair of columns second 
from the door dates not only this church but other similar 
capitals in Athens, Previsa, Argos, and Acro-Corinth, 

^ There has been some controversy as to the date of the original 
building. Stephani, followed by others, assigned it to the end of the 
Byzantine period. Strzygowsky on the evidence of the capitals has 
shown that it cannot be later than the sixth or seventh century (Ath. 
Mitt. xiv. 271), and this view is now generally accepted. Probability 
would point to its having been erected in the time of Justinian while 
his architects were dispersed throughout the country engaged in the 
systematic fortification of the Empire (Deltion, Hist, and Ethn. Soc, 
vol. ii. 711-28). 
z 



338 DAYS IN ATTICA 

which might otherwise be taken for pre-Christian work. 
In the south chapel there is beautiful Gothic vaulting, the 
corbels carved with a free and flowing rendering of violet 
and convolvulus-leaf; ivy, or vine, and the keystones bear- 
ing elaborate bosses. A curious bust is kept in a dusty 
cupboard near the entrance. It is a severe and somewhat 
beautiful representation of the Virgin, and probably dates 
from the fifth or sixth century, that is to say before the 
time of the iconoclasts. 

Of the Turkish town much remains to be seen. The 
old fountain under its plane-tree is one of the best 
specimens of a type to be found wherever the Turk has 
been. A fine house overlooking the southern harbour 
may well have been the residence of the Admiral Pasha. 
The rooms are large and light. Doors and doorways 
have been elaborately carved and gilded, the ceilings are 
of painted wood covered with bamboo trellis-work, while 
round walls and ceilings run wooden mouldings, with 
delicate floral designs on a gold background. When we 
visited this house we found it inhabited by a family of 
Hebrew children who pattered barefoot through the rich, 
empty chambers, while cold sea-breezes blew in through 
the unglazed windows. The mother had a small nucleus 
of household property in the kitchen below, but in the 
large upper rooms there was no furniture beyond a fine 
old oak cradle and a frame for winding wool. In these 
ideal nurseries the children passed their days with no 
plaything but a sportive kitten. Throughout the town 
many smaller Turkish houses may be noticed. There 
are also four mosques and an old bath-house. For 
many years after the revolution Turks and Jews con- 
tinued to live in the Castro^ while the Greeks kept to 
the new town. There are no Turks to be seen now, 
but Chalcis is still the home of a considerable Jewish 
colony. 

A small local museum in the new town contains some 



THE ATTIC COUNTRY-SIDE 339 

interesting archaic sculptures recently found in the temple 
of Apollo at Eretria. The group of a hero carrying off a 
maiden is particularly noteworthy, and the torso of 
Athena which stands beside it probably filled the centre 
of the pediment. 

All this can be seen in one day. If the traveller has 
time to spare he will find a passable inn, and a stay of 
two or three days will enable him to visit the ruins of 
ancient Eretria and also to see something of northern 
Euboea with its varied scenery of mountain, river, and 
woodland. 

There are many other expeditions in Attica. Marathon, 
Salamis, ^gina, and Sunium are not likely to be over- 
looked. They will be pressed upon you by coachmen, 
boatmen, and hotel-keepers, if the magic of their names 
has not proved by itself of sufficient enticement. And 
there are less known spots, the memories of which would 
make me spin out this long chapter for another dozen 
pages. There is Rhamnus with the white foundations 
of its remote temples set deep among the evergreen 
thorns from which the place takes its name ; and there 
are the ancient marble-quarries on Pentelicus. When 
you weary of classical associations there is always the 
Zoo at old Phalerum where you can see other bored 
foreigners — flamingoes, chimpanzees, or giraffes — sil- 
houetted against a background of Hymettus purple. Last 
and best and most refreshing of all there is the view from 
the top of each of the three sister mountains, revealing a 
wilder aspect of this inexhaustible Attica. 



THE END 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 

Crete, Prehistoric. — Sir Arthur Evans's Scripta Minoa, Prehistoric 
Tombs of Knossos, and articles in the Annual of the British 
School of Athens from 1899 onwards, are the main sources of 
information. For summary and discussion see R. M. Burrows' 
Discoveries in Crete; and also Crete the Fore-runner, by C. H. 
and A. B. Hawes. Cretan Palaces and Builders is a readable 
translation of A. Mosso's book, plentifully illustr'ated. J. Baikie, 
Sea Kings of Crete, is a popular sketch. 

Medi-^val. — G. Gerola's large and fineh' illustrated volumes, 
Monumenti Veneti di Creta, are invaluable. H. Noiret, Domination 
Venetienne en Crete, is a fragment of work in the Venetian 
archives interrupted by the death of its brilliant young author. 
There are other books of reference obtainable in the library 
of the Candia Museum. 

Topography and Folklore.— G. Perrot, L'tle de Crete ; 
T. A. B. Spratt, Travels and Researches in Crete (1865) ; 
R. Pashley, Travels in Crete (1837) ; A. Trevor- Battye, Camping 
in Crete; Downes, Map of the Herakleon Dis/nd (Herakleon = 
Candia). 

Mycen^an Period on the Mainland. — Two solid illustrated 
volumes by H. Schliemann on Tiryns and Mycence give the 
results of his excavations. For summary and discussion see 
H. R. Hall, The Oldest Civilization of Greece; Tsountas and 
Manatt, The Mycencean Age; W. Ridgeway, The Early Age of 
Greece; Sir Arthur Evans, Mycencean Tree and Pillar Cult, 
an illuminating study of Mycenaean religion. Homer's Iliad 
and Odyssey in the prose translations by Lang, Leaf, and 
Myers ; and Butcher and Lang ; A. Lang, Homer and his 
Age; H. Browne, Handbook of Homeric Study. 

Legends of Attica. — L. Dyer, The Gods of Greece; J. E. Harrison, 
Mythology and Monuments of Ancient Athens; C. Kingsley, The 
Heroes; W. H. Pater, Greek Studies; J. C. Lawson, Modern 

341 



342 DAYS IN ATTICA 

Greek Folklore. For discussion of origins see L. R. Farnell, 
Cults of the Greek States; J. E. Harrison, Prologometia to the 
Study of Greek Religion ; also two smaller books by the same 
writer, Ancient Art and Ritual; Religion of Greece. 

Athens during Classical Times. — For this long and full period 
the first two volumes of J. G. Frazer's monumental work on 
Pausanias are invaluable. Rawlinson's Herodotus ; Jowett's 
Thucydides ; and Plutarch's Lives by Sir Thomas North are 
translations that retain the flavour of the original. There are 
so many excellent histories of the period that it seems invidious 
to single out any one for special mention. I use J. B. Bury's 
History of Greece, a handy octavo volume ; W. S. Ferguson's 
Hellenistic Athens. G. Finlay's History of Greece (vol. i, from 
B.C. 146) is the chief guide for Athens under the Romans. 

Art and Archaeology. — M. L. D'Ooge, Acropolis of Athens ; 
complete up to 1908. (For later discoveries see articles by 
B. H. Hill and others in the American Journal of Archceology.) 
Ancient Athens, by E. Gardner, is a companion volume to 
the above. H. B. Walters, Art of the Greeks; M. CoUignon, 
Varcheologie Grecque (new edition, 1912) ; A. S. Murray, The 
Sculptures of the Parthenon, with excellent illustrations ; P. 
Gardner, Sculptured Tombs of Hellas. E. Gardner, Handbook to 
Greek Sculpture; there are other useful volumes in the same 
series (Macmillan's Handbooks of Archaeology), including 
T. G. Tucker, Life in Ancient Athens. F. Penrose, Principles of 
Athenian Architecture; W. J. Anderson and R. P. Spiers, 
Architecture of Greece and Rome; G. Dickinson, Catalogue of 
the Acropolis Museum; G. Fougeres, Athenes. 

Social Life. — The Greek Commonwealth, by A. E. Zimmern, 
is graphic and convincing. The Greek View of Life, by G. Lowes 
Dickinson, an inspired sketch in the modest garb of a text- 
book. W. W. Fowler, The City State; E. Abbott, Pericles and 
the Golden Age; R. Caton, Temples and Ritual of Asklepios at 
Epidaurus and Athens; S. H. Butcher, Harvard Lectures on 
Greek Subjects. 

Byzantine Athens. — The remaining six volumes of Finlay's 
History bring the story of Greece down to the middle of the 
nineteenth century. C. Diehl, Excursions in Greece. W. S. 
Crawfurd, Synesius the Hellene, illustrates the impression made 
by Athens on the travellers of Byzantine days ; G. Lampakis^ 
Les Antiquites Chretiennes de la Grece, has a good account of 
the Byzantine paintings in the Parthenon. Mommsen, Athenae 
Christianae, 3l slim book with many plans, not translated ; 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 343 

Choisy, L'Art de Bdtir chez les Byzantins. For individual 
churches see Millet's Monasiere de Daphni, Schultz and Barns- 
ley, Monastery of Saint Luke of Stiris in Phocis, folio volumes 
with many plans and illustrations. Other monographs in 
periodical literature, such as the Byzantinische Zeitschrift, the 
Mitteilungen of the German Institute, and the Annual of the 
British School at Athens. 

Athens under the Franks. — Sir Rennell Rodd, Princes of Achaia 
and Chronicles of Morea (2 vols.) ; W. Miller, Latins in the 
Levant, both recently published and full of picturesque infor- 
mation. F. Gregorovius, Geschichte der Stadt Athen im Mitte- 
lalter; G. Finlay, History of Greece (see above). 

Athens under Ottoman and Venetian Rule.— G. Finlay (as 
above) ; W. Eton's Survey of the Turkish Empire, 1801. Numerous 
works of travel, of which the most rehable, perhaps, are : For 
the seventeenth century, Wheler, Travels in Dalmatia, Greece, 
and the Levant; for the eighteenth century, Chandler, Travels 
in Asia Minor and Greece ; and for the early nineteenth century, 
Hobhouse, Journey through Albania and other parts of Turkey. 

Modern Conditions. — W. Miller, Greek Life in Town and Country 
(full of information not easily found elsewhere) ; Duckett 
Ferriman, Home Life in Hellas (a slighter book, giving a good 
account of the islands) ; J. Irving Manatt, JEgean Days ; D. G. 
Hogarth, A Wandering Scholar in the Levant ; M. Hamilton, 
Greek Saints and their Festivals; G. F. Abbott, Greece in 
Evolution (lectures translated from the French on various 
aspects of Modern Greece) ; Neumann and Partsch, Geographic 
von Griechenland ; Th. von Heldreich, Pflanzen der Attischen 
Ebene ; Karten von Attica^ an excellent series of maps published 
by the German Institute of Archaeology ; the smaller series, 
1 : 100,000, are convenient for the pocket. The Englishman in 
Greece, an anthology of verse. 



INDEX 



Accaiuoli, House of, 217 ; Nerio, 221 ; 

Antony, 221 
^gina, 68, 265 ^ 

iEschylus, 60, 116, 158 
Agamemnon, 59 f., 63 f. 
Akominatos, Michael, 223 
Alaric, 209 
Albanians, 259, 302 
Amalia, Queen, 196, 243, 252 ff. 
Andronicus, Clock Tower of, 174 ff . 
Anticythera, statues from, 14, 188 ff. 
Aphidnae, Plain of, 67, 71, 81 
Arch of Hadrian, 159, 182 
Areopagus, 91, ill, 114 ff. 
Aristion, stele of, 104 
Aristophanes, 89, 152, 163, 165 
Artemis, 79 f., 122, 124, 171 
Asklepios, 162 ff. 
Athena, 14, 75, 89, 134, 137, 209, 211 ; 

Archegetis, 173 ; representations 

of, 126 ff., 131, 339 
Atreus, treasury of, 57 
Attica, 66 ff., 72, 81, 259, 300 ; fauna 

of, 305 ; flora of, 306 ff . 

Babin, 238, 250 

Belvedere Bastion, 242 f. 

Birthday parties, 275 f. 

Boniface, of ]\Iontferrat, 218 ; of 

Verona, 232 f. 
Brienne, Walter of, 218 ff. 
Butler, 287 f. 
Byron, Lord, 161, 239, 240 

Cana in Galilee, stone from, 199 



Candia, 18 ff. ; armoury, 37 ; 
churches, 37 ff. ; fountains, 36, 40 ; 
gailey-houses, 33 f . ; Genoese wall, 
34 f . ; mosques, 38 f . ; museum, 
19 ff. ; siege, 40 ; Venetian occu- 
pation, 30 ff. ; walls and gates, 
36 f. 

Canea, its African character, 15 

Capuchin Monastery, i, 161, 240 f. 

Carnival, 267 ff . 

Castriotes, 244 

Catalan Grand Company, 219 ff. 

Cecrops, 74, 77 f., 273 ; tomb of, 142 ; 
daughters of, 107, 140 

Cephissia, 172, 187, 243, 331 ff. ; Road, 

254 
Cephissian Plain, 45, 168, 301, 322 f. 
Cephissus, 67, 91, ^99, 317, 331 ; in 

Boeotia, 219 
Ceramicus, 90, 309 ff. 
Chalcis, 336 ff. 
Chaeronea, 220 
Chandler, 238, 305 
Children, 277 
Church, General, 243 
Church, Beautiful, 202 ; Hagia 

Paraskevi, 337 ; Kapnikaraia, 200 ; 

Metropolitan, 198 ; Saint George, 

195 ; Saint Nicodemus, 194 ; Saints 

Theodore, 201 ; Saint John of the 

Column, 204 
CHmate, 2, 11, 298 ff. 
Constantine, Emperor, 205 f. 
Cook, 288 f. 
Corinth, 334 f . 



345 



346 



DAYS IN ATTICA 



Costume, Cretan, 41, 43 ; Albanian, 
259 ; Classical, 109, 239, 301 f . 

Crete, 13 ff. ; Christian and Moslem, 
43 ; country travel, 45 ff . ; geo- 
graphy, 17 ; Minoan art, 20 ff . ; 
revolutions, 43 f. 

Daphni, 70, 193, 209, 214 ff., 224 ff., 

318 
Deceleia, 322 ff., 333 
De la Guilletiere, 128 f., 237 
De la Roche, House of, 217, 224 ; 

Otto, 216, 218 ; Guy, 218, 224 ; 

Guy II, 232 
Demeter, 81, 83 f., 211, 319 
Dexileos, 310 
Diocleides, 158, 177 
Dionysus, 81 ff., 96 f., 156, 333 ; Priest 

of, 156 ; relief of, 160 ; theatre of, 

121, 150 ff., 179 f. 
Dodwell, 161, 240, 241 
Dragoman, travel with, 3 

Eleusis, 69, 209, 317, 326 ; mysteries 
of, 83, 317, 320 ; Plain of, 67 

Elgin, Lord, 130, 227, 248, 250 

Erechtheum, 131, 137 if., 273 ; as 
harem, 245 ; as powder-magazine, 
248 

Erechtheus, 71, 74 f., 78, 89 

Eudocia (Athenais), 208 

Euripides, 82, 147, 158, 300 

Fasts of the Greek Church, 5, 269 

Finlay, 243, 253 

Flora of Crete, 47 f. ; of Attica, 

306 ff. 
Frankish tower, 244 

Gait, 161, 240, 244 f . 
Gardener, 291 ff . 
Gell, 240 
Giaour ti, 41 

Grivas, Theodore, chief of the Pali- 
kars, 253 



Hadrian, 98, 167, 173 ; Arch of, 159, 
182 f. ; buildings of, 177 f., 184 ff., 
248 

Hagia Triada, Minoan villas at, 46f 

Harald Hardrada, 2H ff. 

Haydon, 130 

Hegeso, 311 

Hekatompedon, 88, 108, iii ; New, 
128 

Herodes Atticus, 167, 186 f. ; build- 
ings of, 121, 179, 186 

Hippocrates, 165 

Hippolytus, 147, 170 ff . 

Hobhouse, 240, 245 f. 

Hotels, 3, 258 

Housemaid, 289 f. 

Hymettus, 67 f ., 168, 197, 305, 328; 
known as Monte Matto, 176 

Ictinus, 152 

Ida, Mount, 14 f. 

Ilissus, 83, 91, 172, 184, 197, 245, 

254 
Inns, 6 
Irene, Empress, 208 

Julian, Emperor, 206 f. 

Justinian, Emperor, 205 ff., 215, 337' 

Knights, oath of allegiance, 132 
Knossos, palace of, 24 ff . 
Kolokythou, market gardens, 297 



Laurium, 158, 168 

Lepanto, Battle of, 234 

Lion from the Piraeus, 211 ff., 235 f. 

Lithgow, William, 236 f. 

Lotistri, influential company of, 263 

Lycabettus, 67, 78, 168, 172, 202, 259, 

275 
Lysicrates, choragic monument of, i, 

160 ff., 241 



II 

II 



Malaria, influence on Greek history, 

165 
Marbles, burnt to make lime, 187 



INDEX 



347 



Meletios, 215 

Menidi, tomb at, 330 

Mesogaia Plain, 67, 81 

Minoan art, 20 ff. ; civilization, 23 ; 

costume, 29 
Minos, King, 24, 27, 29 
Mohammed II, 198, 227 
Monastery of Daou, 196 ; Daphni, 

see Daphni Kaisariani, 197 ; Holy 

Angels, 201, 260 ; Mendeli, 196 
Monferrat, Boniface, Marquis of, 

218 
Morosini, 146, 235, 248 
Mule, charge for shadow of, 5 
Muntaner Ramon, 222, 233 
Munychia, 91, 168 f., 324 
Museum, National, 99 ff., 166, 234, 

312, 321, 331 ; Acropolis, 106 ff. 

131 ; Polytechnic, 252 
Mycenae, 55 ff., 64, 86 

Nauplia, 50 

Odeum of Pericles, 158 ; of Herodes 

Atticus, 121 
Otho, King, 252, 256, 332 

Palikars, 252 

Pan, Cave of, on Harma, 325 f. ; near 

Vari, 327 ff . 
Pandrosos, 74, 140 ff. ; Precinct of, 131 
Parnes, 67, 168, 306, 322 
Parthenon, 88, 125 ff., 181, 272 
Peasant life, 281 ff. 
Peisistratus, 91, 93 ff., 108, 109, 151, 

184 
Pentelicus, 67, 168, 172, 176, 196, 

305 f., 322 
Pericles, 120, 123, 158, 315 
Petty, William, on the collection of 

antiquities, 249 
Phaedrus, 155 
Phaistos, palace oi; 45 ff. 
Phalerum, 91, 168, 269, 323 
Pheidias, 73, 75, 126 f. 
Philopappus monument, 181 



Phyle, 322 ff. 

Pierre (et Maguelonne), 229 

Piraeus, 169 ff., 236, 246, 324 ; known 

as Porto Leone, 236 
Plaisance, Duchess of, 253 
Plato, 157 ; as a baby, 228 
Pnyx, iiiff., 157 

Poseidon, 74 ff., 134 f., 139, 157, 168 
Praxiteles, 159, 189 
Priests of the Greek Church, 283 
Propylaea, 120 ff., 146 

Quinces, 15 

Routes to Athens, i ; to Crete, 13 

Sacred Way, 214 

Sandys, 237 

Schliemann, Henri, 54, 61 ff. 

Ship-sheds, 34, 169 

Solon, 94, 104 f . 

Sophocles, 152, 158 

Spon (and Wheler), 238 

Sponge-fishers, 266 

Steamers, 8 ff . 

Stoa, of Attalus, 179 f. ; of Eumenes, 

121, 178 ; of Hadrian, 177 ff. ; of the 

Giants, 180 
Sulla, 190, 210 

Sunium, archaic figure from, loi 
Synesius of Cyrene, 208 

Tatoi, 333 f . 

Thackeray, 136 

Theatre, open-air, 269 ; of Dionysus, 

see Dionysus 
Thebes, 229 ff. 
Themistocles, 112, 169 f. 
Theseus, 26, 69 ff., 115, 118, 182, 195 
Thrashing, 56 
Thrasyllus, 161 
Thrasybulus, 323 
Thriasian Plain, 319 
Tiryns, 51 ff., 86 

Travel, hints on, 3 ff. ; Cretan, 45 ff. 
Troezen, 68, 147, 184 



348 



DAYS IN ATTICA 



Vaphio, tomb and gold cups, 62 
Venetian monuments, at Canea, 16 ; 

at Candia, 18, 30 ff. 
Venetians in Athens, 132, 234 f. 
Victory of Archermus, 102 f ., 109 ; 

temple of Wingless, 123, 144 ff., 248 
Villehardouin, 218, 222 
Vlachs, 303 

Wheler, 129, 236, 238, 308 



White Mountains, 14, 17 
Winds, Tower of the, 174 ff. 
Women, position of, 279 ff . 
Wyse, Sir Thomas, 252 f. 



Zappeion Garden, 185, 257 

Zeus, 76 f . ; temple to Olympian, T]^ 

98, 184, 251 ; temple at Piraeus, 

171 



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